As Olympics take place in uneasy world, Japan hopes to match spectacular Tokyo performances

Japan picked up 58 medals at the 2020 Olympic Games – in Tokyo in 2021 thanks to COVID – and the team will be hoping to use the momentum from three years ago to impress again this summer in Paris.

The Paris Olympics will run from July 24 – with the Opening Ceremony on July 26 – to the final day of action and the Closing Ceremony on August 11.

Paris will be very different from Tokyo, where the Olympics were held in the middle of the pandemic with few spectators, masked officials and severe restrictions on movement for all involved. With the pandemic over, French officials have been keen to have a glorious fun-filled Games, celebrating the wonders of Paris and France with lot of joie de vivre. But reality has been getting in the way of the joie.

The French decided to hold the Opening Ceremony on the River Seine, a marvelous idea but one that presents logistical and security difficulties. The idea is that the athletes will parade on boats down the river and people on the banks can see them. There will also be the usual artistic displays going on all around them. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the first rehearsal, for a start. That was canceled due to high winds and there have been constant worries about the state of the river’s water quality. Many of the performers will be on bridges across the river and these apparently are not all in good shape. More importantly, the organizers are terrified of terrorists. During the recent parliamentary elections in France, scores of candidates were attacked and in May, French police arrested a young jihadist who was planning an attack at the Olympic soccer events. 

Tensions with religious groups have been increasing markedly in recent years and France has suffered a number of terrorist attacks. The hosts haven’t endeared themselves to Muslims – who make up 10 percent of France’s population – by banning female athletes from wearing the hijab headwear.

So scared are the French, they are closing all airports within a 150-km radius around Paris during the Opening Ceremony to hopefully protect the many heads of state and VIPs attending the Games. Some consideration was given to moving the Opening Ceremony back to the Stade de France, but it’s too far advanced now to change. However, there will be fewer paying guests for the ceremony, down from an original 600,000 to a little over 100,000, although more than 200,000 invited (i.e., vetted) spectators will be able to watch for free. The Opening Ceremony will start at 2:30 a.m. Japan time (July 27 in Japan).

The Games are also being held in the shadow of wars in Ukraine and Gaza and this could lead to further disturbances. A cyber campaign – purportedly by Russia – was waged against France for its support of Ukraine and there have been many demonstrations against Israel’s punishing attacks on Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. The fear is that these wars could produce proxy conflicts in Paris during the Olympics. 

The controversies don’t end there. The United Nations criticized allowing Russian and Belarussian athletes to take part in the Games, while others criticized the International Olympic Committee for not banning Israelis; the participation of Afghanistan has been criticized as women have been banned by the Taliban from playing sports; 23 members of the Chinese swimming team will participate despite testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug; the Netherlands team includes a beach volleyball player who has been convicted of raping a 12-year-old child; and the inclusion of a transgender athlete could force commentators to revise their pronoun vocabulary.

So, yes, the Paris Olympics are going to be very different from the Tokyo Olympics, but on a sporting level, Japan will be hoping for more of the same.

Japan finished third in the medals table (based on the number of gold medals – 27; they were fifth in terms of medals won – 58) three years ago but will be disappointed to see karate, softball and baseball being excluded from the Paris Games. They won gold in all three in Tokyo. The one new sport in Paris is breaking (aka breakdancing), although kayak cross could be seen as a new sport. Three sports that made their debut in Tokyo – sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding – have been retained, which is good news for Japan, which picked up three golds in skateboarding and two medals each in surfing and sport climbing. 

Mitsugi Ogata, the head of Japan’s delegation to Paris, says they are aiming for 55 medals this time around, while sports data company Gracenote predicts that the team will only manage 46, including 12 golds, three of which are attributed to super gymnast Daiki Hashimoto and another three to wrestlers Yui Susaki, Akari Fujinami and Tsugumi Sakurai. However, Japan’s main strength is usually judo, in which it picked up nine golds, two silvers and a bronze in Tokyo. At the World Judo Championships in May, Japan came away with four gold medals, two silvers and four bronze and they will be hoping to match that at the bare minimum. All eyes will be on siblings Hifumi Abe and Uta Abe, who both won gold in Tokyo.

Apparently, soccer is now the most popular sport in the Olympics and Japan has always taken the event seriously, winning bronze in Mexico in 1968, a landmark achievement in Japan’s soccer history. However, unlike other teams in the competition, Japan will not include overage players in their squad and will stick with the lineup that won the Under-23 Asian Cup in May. Japan’s men lost in the semifinals in Tokyo (1-0 to Spain) and in the quarterfinals in the women’s tournament (3-1 to Sweden). 

Japan also has hopes of success in surfing (Kanoa Igarashi), table tennis (Hina Hayata and Tomokazu Harimoto), badminton (Akane Yamaguchi,  and doubles pairs Nami Matsuyama and Chiharu Shida, Yuta Watanabe and Arisa Higashino), women's basketball (silver medalists in Tokyo) and volleyball after the men’s and women’s teams both finished second at the 2024 Volleyball Nations League.

In tennis, Japan will be represented by Naomi Osaka who would normally be considered a favorite but she is still getting back into the sport following the birth of her daughter last year. Japan No. 1 Moyuka Uchijima will also contend on the women’s side, while Kei Nishikori and Taro Daniel (also Japan’s No. 1) will take to the court on the men’s side.

Japan has a good chance of medaling in swimming but the highlight for many Japanese will be the participation of Rikako Ikee who has been steadily improving her performances since recovering from leukemia. Ikee took part in the Tokyo Games as a member of the 4x100 medley team but has qualified for Paris as an individual in the 100 meters butterfly.

Perhaps the strongest Japanese team at the Olympics is the golf lineup, with Hideki Matsuyama and Keita Nakajima for the men and Yuka Saso and Miyu Yamashita for the women. Matsuyama has been in good form this year, winning the Genesis Invitational in February, while Nakajima won three times in his rookie year in 2023 on the Japan Tour and grabbed his first win on the DP World Tour in March. Saso recently won the US Open for the second time, while Yamashita has 11 wins on the JLPGA Tour and finished second in this year’s Women’s PGA Championship.

While France will be hoping to do well on home turf, the country will probably just be happy to survive the summer heat, political problems, terrorist threats and noisy foreign guests. Usually, things turn out all right on the night.

© Japan Today