The most memorable moments from the Summer Olympics in Japan

With the Paris Olympics officially underway, we thought we’d take a look back at some of Japan’s most memorable moments at the Summer Olympics and come up with our latest top 7 list.

1. The Witches of the East: Japan’s legendary women’s volleyball team

The 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics were a huge success for Japan, helping to establish a new image for the country around the world as a modern, peaceful nation that had moved on from an era of military aggression. The host nation won a record 16 gold medals during the Games, including Among them, 10 are wrestlers and gymnasts.

televisionMost memorable victorybut, On the final day of the first women’s volleyball tournament, the Japanese team – a group of workers from Osaka textile factories known as the “Witches of the East” – took on the more physically powerful Soviet team. Two years ago, the Japanese team defeated the host team in Moscow and won its first world championship, causing a huge sensation.

In Tokyo, the Soviet team prepared to launch a battle of revenge.

The two had lost only one set in their previous four group matches. Led by front rower Hirofumi Ohmatsu, the Japanese team trained 10-11 hours a day. The long hours paid off as the team won the match 3-0, with the largest television audience ever to watch the match in Japan. “Everything stopped for the last point,” said author Robert Whiting Tokyo WeekendIn 2021, Julien Faraut released a documentary called Witch of the East Their achievements.

2. Toshi Fujimoto: Perfect performance despite a broken knee

Japan won an incredible five straight titles in the rhythmic gymnastics team all-around between 1960 and 1976. This was the golden age of Japanese gymnastics, thanks to legends like Kato Sawao (who made more podiums than any other Japanese Olympian) and Ono Takashi (who won the most medals).

The 1976 Montreal Olympics were the last Olympics the former participated in, but it was his teammate Shun Fujimoto who stole the headlines.

When he took on the challenge of the 2.4-meter rings in the floor exercise with a broken kneecap, the Japanese team was evenly matched with the Soviet team. Fujimoto quietly persevered to help his team, scoring a 9.5 on the pommel horse and then a personal best of 9.7 on the rings, where he managed to keep his balance but dislocated his already broken knee and damaged ligaments in the process.

“There’s no time to sympathize with him,” Kato said The Japan Times“The competition was going on and we were walking a tightrope. No one mentioned injuries and no one said the word ‘hero.’ Everybody was doing their job.” Japan waited 28 years for its next team gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

3. Yasuhiro Yamashita: The heroic victory of the greatest judoka in Japanese history

Japan triumphed again against all odds at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, when Yasuhiro Yamashita limped to victory in the men’s open judo event. Yamashita was an iconic figure who seemed destined to become the greatest judoka ever to never win an Olympic gold medal. As a freshman in college, he was selected as an alternate for the Montreal Olympics but did not play. Four years later, Yamashita was at the peak of his powers, but he again missed the Olympics when Japan was one of 65 countries to boycott the Moscow Games in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics were seen as his last chance for success. The four-time world champion had not lost since 1977 and was considered the favorite to win the gold medal.

Then, injuries happened.

In his preliminary match against West Germany’s Arthur Schnabel, Yamashita tore a muscle in his right calf, which put him at a serious disadvantage. Despite his struggles, he defeated France’s Laurent Del Colombo in the semifinals and Egypt’s Mohammed Ali Rashwan in the final. Ali Rashwan received an award from the International Fair Play Committee for not targeting his right leg. Yamashita retired in 1985, having won 203 consecutive matches.

4. Nishida Shuhei and Oe Sueo: Medal of Friendship

The 1936 Berlin Olympics will always be remembered for the four gold medals won by black sprinter Jesse Owens, who was credited with “single-handedly shattering Adolf Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy.” For Japanese fans, there were six gold medals to admire – however, the biggest delights were undoubtedly the silver and bronze medals.

In the pole vault, 1932 Olympic silver medalists Shuhei Nishida and Sueo Ōe competed fiercely with good friends. Earl Meadows of the United States won the championship with a score of 4.35 meters, followed by Nishida, Sueo Ōe and American Bill Sefton in a tie for second place.

After Sefton was eliminated, Nishida and Oe stopped competing because they wanted to share the silver medal. The referee refused and informed the Japanese officials that they would have to decide who would take second and third place. Nishida then won the silver medal – probably because he cleared 4.25 meters on his first attempt – and Oe won the bronze medal.

The two were not satisfied with the result, so they decided to do it themselves upon returning to Japan. They found a jeweler who cut their medal in half and then welded them together to create the “Friendship Medal.” Nishida’s medal is now on display at his alma mater, Waseda University.

5. Oda Mikio and Hitomi Kinue: A historic day in Amsterdam

On August 2, 1928, Oda Mikio won Japan’s and Asia’s first gold medal in the men’s triple jump in Amsterdam. Japanese athletes also won on the podium in the same event at the next two Olympic Games. As Asia’s first Olympic champion, Oda’s achievement should have been widely celebrated. However, according to him, his return was not much of a welcome. He was welcomed at a restaurant in his hometown of Hiroshima, but that was it.

“When I won, I didn’t become a star,” he told Asahi Shimbun Reporter Kazuo Zhongtiao“Only some people To acknowledge this is a remarkable achievement.”

On the same day that Oda took the podium, Kinue Hitomi won silver in the 800m in track and field. As Japan’s first female Olympian, she first competed in the 100m, but was disappointingly eliminated in the semifinals despite breaking the world record two months earlier. She was then allowed to compete in the 800m, a distance she had never competed before. She finished in 2:17:6, less than a second behind Germany’s Lena Radke.

After returning to Japan, Hitomi must answer Inappropriate questions about her weight and whether she was really a woman.

6. Kitajima Kosuke: Tai Kimochi II

Japan’s second Olympic gold medal after Oda was won in the swimming pool by Yoshiyuki Tsuruta, who returned to the podium four years later in Amsterdam and Los Angeles.

With 24 gold medals, swimming is Japan’s fourth-most-medaled sport at the Summer Olympics, after judo, wrestling and gymnastics. The two most impressive victories came from Hisao Kitamura and Kyoko Iwasaki, both 14 years old when they won gold. However, Japan’s most memorable moment in the pool may belong to Kosuke Kitajima. At the 2004 Athens Olympics, all eyes were on his showdown in the 100m breaststroke final against world record holder Brendan Hansen of the United States.

In the first semifinal, Kitajima broke the Olympic record, but in the second, the American broke it again. In the final, the two were separated by just 0.17 seconds, and the Japanese athlete narrowly defeated Hansen. However, he was lucky to escape punishment for an illegal dolphin kick.

After the game, Kitajima let out a scream and said, “Kimchi No.2” (“I feel good”), which was voted as the buzzword of the year. He also made the podium in the 200-meter breaststroke, with Hansen taking third place. Four years later at the Beijing Olympics, Kitajima repeated his glory of winning double gold at the Athens Olympics.

7. Naoko Takahashi: Japan’s first female track and field gold medalist

For Japanese fans, the marathon has long been considered one of the highlights of the Olympics. Yet the country has won gold in the 42km race only once in the 20th century – a victory at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Son Ki-chung, an ethnic Korean who represented Japan only because his country was under Japanese rule at the time. The first Japanese-born athlete to reach the podium in the Olympic marathon was Naoko Takahashi at Sydney 2000. She is also the first non-judoka from Japan to win a gold medal since teenage Iwasaki’s record-breaking win in the swimming pool in 1992.

It was an impressive achievement for a runner who had switched from 5,000m to marathon only a few years earlier. She won the race in 2:23:14, breaking Joan Benoit’s 16-year-old Olympic record. A week before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, a documentary exploring Takahashi’s journey was released, titled distance.

“I want my life to have meaning,” she said. “The most important thing is to ask yourself, ‘Did I accomplish enough today? Do I have any regrets today?’ I ask myself these questions every day.”

Four years after Takahashi’s victory, Mizuki Noguchi She became the second Japanese female athlete to win a gold medal in track and field. Her victory in Athens also came in the marathon event.

More in this series