1940 Summer Olympics- When Tokyo Cancelled Its First Olympics

by Ray Matsumoto

Japan won the bid to host the 1940 Summer Olympics on July 31st, 1936, the day before the opening of the Berlin Games (Weber 67). This was the first time a non-Western nation won the right to host the tournament, sending shock waves throughout the sporting industry. Japan competed in the Olympics for the first time at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. Only two Japanese athletes participated in a total of four events. Mishima Yahiko competed in the 100 meters, 200 meters, and 400 meters, while Kanakuri Shizō participated in the Marathon; neither managed to win a medal. At the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, Japan managed to earn two silver medals in Tennis. Japan’s success was in large part due to the establishment of the Japanese Amateur Athletic Association (Dainihon taiiku kyokai), the first national body (unofficial) of athletics in Japan (Collins 963). ​

Despite only winning a bronze medal in 1924 (Paris, France), the Japanese athletic industry experienced a significant rise throughout the ‘20s. The Paris Games was the first time the Japanese government subsidized the Olympic team. Moreover, physical education became increasingly important to the imperial regime, establishing the National Institute for Research in Physical Education and the Meiji Shrine Games (Meidjijingū Kyōgi Taikai, Collins 965). Japan won its first gold medal in the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Oda Mikio and Tsuruta Yoshiyuki earned first place in the men’s triple jump and 200-meter breaststroke, respectively. The tournament also saw Japan’s first female medalist with Hitomi Kinue winning silver in the women’s 800 meters.

Mikio Oda, Gold Medal Winner, 1928 Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/ Copyright: Public Domain

The Japanese team at the opening ceremony of the 1912 Summer Olympics, 1912 Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/ Copyright: Public Domain

Yoshiyuki Tsuruta, Gold Medal Winner, 1928 Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/ Copyright: Public Domain

In 1931, Japan officially placed its bid to host the Olympics. In the same year, the athletic landscape in the country significantly changed following the invasion of Manchuria. The state began emphasizing militarist and traditional values in physical education, such as budō (Japanese martial arts). It sparked the shift toward Pan-Asian narratives surrounding the 1940 Summer Olympics. Japan’s hosting did not merely symbolize its rise in sports but its place as a leader of “Greater East Asia.” By 1935, Tokyo competed with nine other nations to host the event, including Barcelona, Rome, and Helsinki. However, with Germany’s backing, Japan won the bid to host the tournament over Helsinki by a vote of 36 to 27. Japan ended the 1936 competition with eighteen medals, including six gold. Two years later, in March 1938, the IOC confirmed Japan’s hosting of the 1940 Winter Olympics in Sapporo (Collins 959).
Japan experienced an Olympic fever in 1936. People celebrated and paraded throughout the nation. Athletes, in particular, were enthused by the prospect of competing in the Olympics in their home nation. However, the celebrations were short-lived due to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937. Several government and military officials demanded the cancellation of the Olympics to focus on the conflict in China. The military, in particular, declared that no horses would be provided for the event as they would be needed for war (Weber 69). Moreover, several nations, including the U.S., threatened to boycott the Tokyo Games due to Japanese brutalities in China. In July 1938, the Japanese government decided to forfeit the Tokyo and Sapporo Games. The IOC transferred the event to Helsinki, but the games were canceled following Germany’s invasion of Poland.

1940 Tokyo Olympics Poster, 1940 Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/ Copyright: Public Domain

The nation suffered financially from the cancellation of the event. According to an article from Hanashi magazine, roughly 3.5 million yen was spent on promotions alone in Tokyo (Schreiber 5). Another 7.5 million was spent between 1937 and 1938 for a temporary office in the South Manchurian Railway Building (Toranomon in Tokyo), and 1.5 million was used for sending delegations to the U.S. and Germany (Schreiber 5). 
The Japanese government hosted a smaller sporting event in the summer of 1940. In June, Tokyo hosted five nations, China (Nanjing puppet government), Hawaiʻi, Manchukuo, Mengjiang (Mongolia), and the Philippines, for the East Asian Games (toa kyuugi taikai). The tournament was heavily propagandized with Pan-Asian and emperor-centric slogans. Japan dominated the games, winning ten out of eighteen track and field competitions, as well as winning every game in Basketball, Soccer, and Volleyball (Asahi).
Tokyo eventually hosted the Olympics in 1964 and recently in 2021 (scheduled for 2020 but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic). The Japanese Olympic Committee, and the government, largely ignore its wartime history. Some institutions and media outlets did cover the “Phantom Olympics” during the lead-up to the 2020 Olympics, but most present Japan as a victim of the war rather than the aggressor. Although militarist and ultranationalist sentiment no longer existed in the Japanese athletic community during the postwar era, the Olympics continued to play a propagandistic role in the nation. The 1964 tournament symbolized Japan’s postwar economic recovery. It presented a new narrative of Japanese superiority, which successfully cut off the nation’s wartime history from its postwar success. It exemplifies Japan’s amnesiac attitude surrounding wartime brutalities, as the government continues to ignore its past in an attempt to “move on.”
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The Olympic rings on display at Tokyo Bay to promote the Games Dick Thomas Johnson - https://www.flickr.com/photos/31029865@N06/51214528037/

Works Cited:
Collins, Sandra. “Introduction: 1940 Tokyo and Asian Olympics in the Olympic Movement.” The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 24, no. 8, 2007, pp. 955–76, DOI: 10.1080/09523360701376532.
Schreiber, Mark. “1940 Tokyo: The Olympiad That Never Was.” The Asia Pacific Journal, vol. 18, no. 5, ser. 10, 1 Mar. 2020, pp. 1–7. 10, https://apjjf.org/2020/5/Schreiber.html. 
“Undō nenkan Shōwa 16” 運動年鑑 昭和16年度 [Sports Yearbook Shōwa 16] by Asahi Newspaper, 1941, Digital Collection at the National Diet Library, Tokyo, Japan. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1138743/1/4.
Weber, Torsten. Japan through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics, edited by Barbara G. Holthus et al., Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, 2020, pp. 66–72. 

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