The 1940 Tokyo Games: The Missing Olympics

Japan, the Asian Olympics and the Olympic Movement

By representing their experience of modernity as different from the West in their respective Olympic Games, Asian nations reveal much about the ambitions and anxieties of being an Asian host in the continuing western Olympic hegemony. This original work explores the encounter between ‘the East and the West’ by analyzing the deliberate self-presentational cultural diplomacy historically required of Asian Olympic hosts.

Exploring the relationship between Modern Asia and the Olympic Games, it focuses on the forgotten history of the 1940 Tokyo Olympics to reveal the complex and fascinating encounter between Japan and the world in the 1930s. The book is the first full account of this encounter and draws substantially on Japanese sources hitherto unknown in the English-speaking world. It argues that this encounter sets the scene and the tone for later Asian involvement in the Olympic Movement. It includes chapters on:

• Imperial Commemoration and Diplomacy
• the Japanese Fascist Olympics
• the Event, Japanese Style
• the Spectre of 1940 in Later Asian Olympics.

This work fills a gap in the literature, and provides an original addition to the history of Japanese culture, Asian cultures and the Olympic Movement.

This book is a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.