Mariko Nagai walked outside Yoyogi National Gymnasium — the late architect Kenzo Tange’s masterpiece from Tokyo’s 1964 Summer Olympics — and pictured the c
Mariko Nagai walked outside Yoyogi National Gymnasium — the late architect Kenzo Tange’s masterpiece from Tokyo’s 1964 Summer Olympics — and pictured the city in that era.
She was a university student from the north who landed a job as an interpreter at the dazzling swimming venue, where American Don Schollander would win four gold medals.
“I wouldn’t say Japanese people were confident about the ability to become one of the advanced nations,” Nagai said. “But we wanted to show how much recovery we had made.”
Tange’s jewel, with a soaring roofline that still defines modern architecture, symbolized Japan’s revival just 19 years after the ravages of World War II. A centerpiece in 1964, it will host handball in Tokyo’s 2020 Olympics, a link between the past and present in the capital.
Tuesday will mark two years before the opening ceremony of the 2020 Games. The new National Stadium is rising on the site of the demolished one that hosted the opening in 1964. Tokyo organizers chose to re-use several other buildings, partly to cut costs. They include Nippon Budokan, the spiritual home of judo and other martial arts that became a well-known rock concert venue in the ensuing decades.
For Nagai, the theme of recovery also links now and then. She grew up in Sendai, near the northeast coastline that was devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The 9.0 quake destroyed the house where she had lived until she was 18. No one was living there at the time, but family treasures were lost or destroyed.
“Again, this is an opportunity to showcase to the world how much recovery we have made,” she said.
Nagai still has her Olympic blazer, now faded and minus a breast-pocket patch that she removed after the games — and has since lost, possibly in the earthquake rubble. The embroidered emblem featured Japan’s rising sun, the Olympic rings and “TOKYO 1964” etched across the bottom.
Few foreign visitors walked Tokyo’s streets back then, unlike in today’s tourism boom. Japan had 29 million foreign visitors last year and expects 40 million in 2020. “A lot of ordinary people who were not used to seeing foreigners felt extraordinary that they could be surrounded by so many non-Japanese,” Nagai said.
