Winning the Cold War in East Asia: Sport and Regionalism

The sensational 1962 Asian Games illustrated the dynamics of Asian regionalism during the Cold War.   The Indonesian Asian Game organizers failed to invite Nationalist China and Israel despite being instructed to do so by the International Olympic Committee. When, in response, the IOC ordered nations to withdraw their athletes from the Asian Games, South Korea did so immediately but Japan did not.   Japanese officials claimed that the decision whether or not to participate was to them and that this issue was a “test of Japan’s right to assert any form of Asian political leadership.”
The 1962 Asian Games influenced the diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan, both of which were aligned with Western nations of the IOC.  The international criticisms of the 1962 Games also sparked the creation of GANEFO (The Games of the New Emerging Forces) by Sukharto.  The first GANEFO was held in 1963 in Indonesia.
Sports have long played a pivotal role in the process of nation building in East Asia. This paper will examine several intersecting discourses – on the Cold War, sports, and East Asia regionalism – in order to understand how sports in the Cold War period was initiated as a critical diplomatic tool to facilitate the growing regionalism in East Asia.   By looking at the controversies that surrounded the 1962 Asian Games which were held in Jakarta, Indonesia, the role of sport in the politics of the regionalism of East Asia will be analyzed.