ABSTRACT
During the bidding and preparation for three Tokyo Olympiads – the cancelled 1940 Games, the successful 1964 Games, and the upcoming 2020 Games – political actors mobilised Olympic symbolism and rhetoric for particular purposes. Juxtaposing three examples of Olympic planning for a single city in disparate historical circumstances shows the flexibility and persistence of the particular opportunities and pressures created by the Olympics’ enduring symbolism and their impact on domestic political contests. The political usefulness of the Olympics emerges from the ambiguous politics of the Olympic Movement, the mass media attention to the Games, and the nested spatiality of an event overseen by an international organisation for a global audience but organised along national lines and hosted by a single city.
