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2023年2月1日

Barbara Holthus discusses Tokyo Olympics legacy at OAG lecture

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Since Tokyo won the bid to host the Olympic Games in 2013, the year 2020 was traded as both a “goal” and a “new beginning” in the country. To this end, the Olympic Games were instrumentalised in a variety of ways, including Tokyo as the capital of “Cool Japan”; the most technologically sophisticated Olympics; economic rebound; a new volunteer culture. In this talk on 1 February at the OAG Tokyo and online, DIJ deputy director and Olympic volunteer Barbara Holthus will contrast these efforts to reinvent the country and the instrumentalisation of the Olympics with what ultimately became of these lofty goals. What was Tokyo 2020/21 and what remains socially, economically, (infra)structurally? Barbara’s lecture also offers insights into the pandemic Games themselves through participant observation as “field cast” volunteers at the Paralympic Games. For more information on research related to the Olympics, see the DIJ’s special project on the Tokyo Olympics and the open access book publication Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics.