1964 Tokyo Olympic Games - replica of the Olympic cauldron outside the museum.
By Philip Barker
During the 2021 Olympics, there were plenty of reminders of Japan’s Olympic past to be found throughout Tokyo.
The original stadium, built for the 1958 Asian Games and subsequently upgraded for 1964, was demolished to make way for a new structure, but this at least was constructed on the original site.
A new Olympic museum has taken root a short distance away and alongside the Olympic Rings and the obligatory statue of Pierre de Coubertin, there are scale replicas of the cauldrons used for Tokyo’s first Olympics in 1964 and also for the Winter Games held in Sapporo in 1972 and the 1998 Games in Nagano.
Further Olympic heritage could also be found at Enoshima where the sailing took place once again. The Equestrian centre was another location originally used in 1964.
Kenzo Tange’s superb Yoyogi National Gymnasium, originally used for swimming and diving in 1964 can still be seen in all its glory. A separate annex was used for basketball.
In the Yoyogi Park, where military accommodation had been constructed after the second world war, low level chalets were built to house athletes during the 1964 Games.
An example of these has been preserved as an “Olympic Memorial House.”
As many visitors did not speak Japanese, an extensive system of pictograms was devised for the first time. This was recalled at the opening ceremony in the presentation entitled “Let the Games begin.”
The official ceremony guide said:
“These pictograms eventually became used all over the world, and their legacy continues. For this year’s Games, they have been updated to become a set of ‘kinetic pictograms’ that will come to life in the Olympic Stadium. The lively spectacle of the pictogram performers coming together to introduce all 50 events is sure to build anticipation for the weeks to come. The performance will be a show of support for all the athletes, while also conveying the athletes’ passion for their sport to all those watching the ceremony.”
ISOH Secretary Markus Osterwalder wrote extensively on the pictograms in a Volume 22 issue of the Journal of Olympic History.
For the 2021 Games, “kinetic pictograms” provided a “contemporary update” to the original 1964 designs. “They are also expected to be used in sport presentation videos that will be screened inside the venues, during live coverage of each event, and as an element of smartphone apps and digital signage, to add to the image of Tokyo, and Japan in general, as places leading the field of technology.
Ceremony producers said “We wanted the kinetic pictograms to do more than just replicate the movement of each sport and event, so once the design of the static pictograms was complete, we made the depiction more dynamic by adding “appearance” and “disappearance” movements before and after a “static” element, creating one complete pattern.”
There are no comments published yet.