Excellence, Friendship, and Respect: Japan’s Entry into the Olympic Movement

Since they began in 1896, the modern Olympic Games have been inextricably linked to global politics. The Games’ founders sought to reconcile international hostilities based on national, religious, and racial differences through peaceful competition on the playing field. However, the pacifist political agenda that the Olympics’ founders sought to institutionalize has always been contradictory, since nationalistic partisanship and various forms of bigotry are also woven into the fabric of the Olympic Games. As the founders of the Olympic Movement sought to spread their vision of international peace and goodwill through sports beyond the boundaries of Europe and the Americas, Japan was simultaneously staking out its place among the global geopolitical hierarchy of imperialist nations. The Japanese government came to devote significant resources to becoming the first Asian country to have a member on the International Olympic Committee (1909), to send athletes to compete (1912), and to win the right to host (1940). This paper will explore Japan’s political motivations as it joined the Olympic movement in the early-20th century – first hesitantly and then zealously as the event came to be a bigger and better stage on which to flex one’s national muscle. Successful participation in the Olympics required support from multiple segments of society – from imperial subjects to the highest levels of the government – and Japan’s entry into this movement in 1909 represented a new form of popular political involvement. A close look at the actors involved reveals an important means by which modern citizens were building consensus around the international presentation of a co-created national Japanese identity.

See more of: Shifts in Political Culture across 20th-Century Japan
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