The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 18 | Issue 4 | Number 17 | Article ID 5357 | Feb 15, 2020

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Confronting the Olympic Paradox: Modernity andEnvironment at a Crossroads in Downtown Tokyo

Peter Matanle

Abstract: The 2020 Summer Olympics willbe the hottest ever; due to a combinationof climate change and scheduling themwhen Tokyo is at its most sweltering. Citieshave been transformed, with the Gamesused by governments to unite citizensbehind patriotic visions of national successand project a modernist image of a cityand nation on the leading edge of globalprogress. This is the Olympic paradox-being uniquely symbolic of modernitywhile also complicit in modernity’soutcome, including the systematicdepletion of the Earth’s resources, ourdestruction of its habitats, and pollution ofthe biosphere with emissions and effluentswhich together threaten the sustainabilityof life on Earth.

It’s Getting Hotter

The world is heating up. So is Japan. And so isTokyo . In 1876, the average annualtemperature for central Tokyo was 13.6°C. In2019 it was 16.5°. The highest recorded annualaverage for the city thus far has been 17.3°, in2004; and the last time the annual average wasbelow 15.0° was in 1984 (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Average annual temperature inTokyo, 1876-2019. Data Source: JMA

(2020).Notes: Average temperature for the whole

period = 14.9°C. Red bars = >14.9°.Trendline R2 value = 0.80271.

The highest daytime temperature everrecorded in Japan was 41.1°C, in KumagayaCity, Saitama Prefecture, on 23 July 2018. Thatday, nearby Ome City in northwestern TokyoPrefecture recorded Japan’s sixth highestrecorded temperature of 40.8°, while centralTokyo was a relatively balmy 39.0°! Of the 20highest readings taken throughout Japan sincethe 1870s, fifteen have been since 2000, fourwere in the 1990s, and one was in 1933. In1876 there was one day when the daytimenational high was greater than 35°; in 2019there were twelve, with these clustered aroundthe 21 days that span 20 July through 10August (JMA, 2020). On 12 August 2013 Tokyorecorded its highest one-day minimum of 30.4°,the first recorded occasion that the city hadexperienced a whole 24-hour period – frommidnight to midnight – without the temperaturefalling below 30°. The 2020 Tokyo OlympicGames will begin on 24 July and end on 9August.

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A Short History of Climate Science and theOlympic Games

In 1896, the year that the first Olympic Gamesof the modern era were held in Athens, Greece,and building upon the work of Tyndall, Fourierand others, Swedish physical chemist SvanteArrhenius (1859-1927) published the firstcalculations demonstrating that the Earth’ssurface temperature would change accordingto the concentration of carbon dioxide in theatmosphere (Arrhenius, 1896). Ironically,Arrhenius considered any resulting warming tobe a benefit, particularly in northern climes,where he lived.

By the influence of the increasingpercentage of carbonic acid in theatmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ageswith more equable and better climates,especially as regards the colder regions ofthe earth, ages when the earth will bringforth much more abundant crops than atpresent, for the benefit of rapidlypropagating mankind.

Svante Arrhenius (1908: 63)

Is it a coincidence that scientific knowledgeabout global heating, its occurrence andimpacts, and the development of the OlympicGames as the world’s foremost sportingspectacle have gone hand in hand in time? Putanother way, are not the Games and climatescience together the embodiment of Europeannotions of scientific rationality, modernity, andtheir material expression in modernization?

As a founder of the Nobel Prizes, and arecipient himself , Arrhenius was thequintessential modernist scientist who believeddeeply in the contributions of science to humanprogress. Likewise, Frenchman Baron Pierre deCoubertin (1863-1937) brought modernistideals about athleticism, amateurism, peace,and progress together to create the modern

Olympic Games. Like Arrhenius, de Coubertinwent on to win a medal of his own making, theGold Medal for Literature at the 1912Stockholm Olympics. (Yes, there were medalsfor cultural competitions at Stockholm!) It isfun to speculate that perhaps Arrhenius and deCoubertin may even have met, at one of theelite internationalist European soirées amongwhich they must both have circulated.

One can continue to play with coincidences.1964 was another critical moment in climatescience. That year the US National ScienceFoundation agreed to continue funding CharlesDavid Keeling’s work in collecting readings ofatmospheric carbon dioxide concentration atthe Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.Different stories abound, but it seems theoriginal sponsors considered Keeling’s resultsto be normal and expected, and decided to endhis funding and direct him elsewhere.However, Keeling’s tenacity in arguing formaintaining the continuity of the datapersuaded the NSF (Ziska & Dukes, 2011: 28).The resulting ‘Keeling Curve’ is now creditedas br ing ing g loba l a t tent ion to theaccumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth’satmosphere and considered one of the mostimportant scientific discoveries of the 20thcentury (Oreskes & Conway, 2010). There isconsequently just one gap in Keeling’s data,from February through April of 1964 (Chang,2005). The Tokyo Games were held in October.What if the NSF had decided not to fundKeeling’s work?

One could probably find a significant momenta s s o c i a t e d w i t h k n o w l e d g e a b o u tenvironmental collapse for every year that themodern Olympic Games have been held; theproblem is so pervasive, and so modern. In1988, the year of the Olympic Games in Seoul,South Korea, the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change was established (IPCC, 2020).It’s work in synthesizing the science on globalheating and climate breakdown has beenfundamental in providing the evidence base for

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climate change diplomacy through theUNFCCC and associated COP meetings, and iscritical in defeating climate change denialism.1

And the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games provokedthe most extreme environmental reaction to theGames thus far, over the risk to athletes’ andvisitors’ health in what was considered one ofthe world’s most polluted cities. It was partlywestern media discourse in the lead-up to theGames, including a critical article in the NewYork Times in 2007, that galvanized theChinese authorities to mitigate the effects of airpollution (Kahn & Yardley, 2007), including thetemporary closure of industries and forcedreductions in road traffic use (Watts, 2008).

The point here is not to argue that the SeoulGames prompted the establishment of theIPCC, or whether Arrhenius and de Coubertinever met. Instead it is to acknowledge theweaving in and out of the paths down whichmodernity flows or is expressed, and discusshow these then come together to createmeaning in some not so surprising patterns.

The Tokyo 2020 Problem

Tokyo 2020 faces a similar problem to the onethat confronted Beijing; which is the limits ofnature’s capacity to provide solutions to theoutcomes of modernization. Although the 1964Games were held in October, a beautiful timeto show off the country, Tokyo 2020 will bemuch hotter than 56 years ago, both because ofthe change of season and the fact that theworld is heating up. The highest temperatureexperienced during the 1964 Olympic Gameswas 23.3°, on 15 October (JMA, 2020); 17.8°lower than the record temperature set inKumagaya in 2018.

And it’s not just the heat. Japanese summersare notoriously muggy. Throughout thesummer, damp and hot Pacific Ocean airsteadily blows from the Philippines towards the

Japanese archipelago above the warmnorthwards flowing Kuroshio ocean current.Together they form the western edge of theNorth Pacific Subtropical Gyre which,incidentally, is simultaneously the world’slargest biome and the site of the Great PacificGarbage Patch, to which Japan is a majorcontributor, in part due to the debris producedby the 2011 tsunami in Tōhoku (Lebreton et al,2018). It is the heating of this gyre which feedsthe increasingly frequent and destructivetropical storms which batter Japan everysummer and autumn, such as Typhoon Hagibis,whose cyclonic system interrupted the 2019Rugby World Cup with wind and rainfall of suchsever i ty that i t was descr ibed as an‘atmospheric river’ carrying possibly twice thevolume of water that flows down the Amazon(Normile, 2019; Wang, Wang & Cao, 2019). In2019 the average humidity index for Tokyoshowed 89 and 80 per cent for July and Augustrespectively (JMA, 2020).

The decision to hold the Games at the hottestperiod of the year was apparent ly toaccommodate the preferences of U.S. televisionnetworks anxious to avoid clashes with theAmerican sports calendar (Foster, 2018).Nevertheless, the Tokyo organising committeehas responded by rescheduling some events forthe morning, constructing shelters, settinglimits on volunteers’ contributions and movingthe marathon and long-distance walking eventsto Sapporo, the largest city in the northernisland of Hokkaido. Tokyo Governor KoikeYuriko has publicly expressed opposition to themove, but been unable to prevent it since thedecision rests with the International OlympicCommittee, who are mindful of the dangersafter atheletes collapsed at the WorldChampionships in Doha in 2019, and 40 percent of competitors in the women’s marathonfailed to complete (McCurry, 2019).

But aren’t these solutions merely stickingplasters used to hide something much deeperand more serious that humanity is as yet

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unwilling to get a grip on?

Confronting Modernity

Kuma Kengo’s Olympic Stadium nestlesinto its urban setting in downtown Tokyo.Photo: Peter Matanle, 16 January 2020.

I s there a c learer express ion o f theconsciousness of modernity – its urge towardsimprovement, progress, and the individual self– than the Olympic Games? Modernity,modernism, and modernization are infused intoevery aspect of the Games, f rom thespectacular stadia, through dazzlingceremonies , to sensat ional ath let icachievements. Amid the tendency to beanalytical, and perhaps critical, let’s first notforget that the Olympic Games is an immensesource of inspiration, delight, entertainment,peace, idealism, and sheer unadulterated joyfor millions of people around the world. Anddon’t we all need some joy in our lives fromtime to time?

But in our anticipation of the joy andinspiration to come this summer in Tokyo, let’sacknowledge other aspects of modernity thatthe Olympic Games embodies. The environmenthas always been a central concern for theGames. Host cities have used the occasion toremodel, renew, gentrify, and clean their cities,in the process investing billions of dollars innew stadia, transportation infrastructure, andtechnologies. In this sense ‘environment’ hasmeant a human-centered expression of the

aesthetics of one’s immediate surroundings.Cities have been transformed, with the Gamesused by governments to unite citizens behindpatriotic visions of national success and projecta modernist image of a city and nation on theleading edge of global progress (Rowe, 2012).

Amid mounting criticism of the costs of theOlympics to the natural environment, however,that word has taken on a more urgent meaningby its association with the enormous materialconsumption, waste, and emissions generatedby the Games, through city remodeling, thehosting of participants and visitors, and thecommercialization – or cheapening – of idealismand human achievement with merchandisingand sponsorship. We live in a world which isheating up because of our profligate use offossil fuels. We are facing a catastrophiccollapse in the sustainability of life on Earth,and the Olympic Games, despite or because ofthe inspiration they provide for millionsworldwide, are complicit in that destruction.

And let’s stop thinking such language isalarmist. Who could deny that a 60 per centloss of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, andamphibian numbers worldwide since 1970 is acalamity (WWF, 2018)? Who would questionthat the contribution of climate change to theseverity of the Australian bushfires of 2019-20,and the politically motivated procrastinationwithin that country’s government over coalmining, is catastrophic, with more than 1billion animals now estimated dead (Zee &Torres, 2020)? The world’s most eminentscientists writing for the most sober anderudite journals now routinely use words suchas ‘annihilation’ (Ceballos, Ehrlich & Dirzo,2017), ‘catastrophe’ (Williams. Bolitho & Fox,2003), and ‘cataclysm’ (Campbell, ed., 2008)when presenting evidence of the impacts ofmodernity on nature.

This is the Olympic paradox. In being uniquelysymbolic of modernity in achieving what theOlympic motto – ‘faster, higher, stronger’ –

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asks of its competitors, it is also complicit,therefore, in modernity’s outcome. For,alongside the global success of modernizationin producing longer, healthier, happier andmore fulfilling lives for billions of people acrossthe world, comes the systematic depletion ofthe Earth’s resources, our destruction of itshabitats, and pollution of the biosphere withemissions and effluents which togetherthreaten the sustainability of life on Earth.

Nowhere has this Olympic paradox been moreevident than in the Asian summer games ofTokyo, Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo once more.Even as each country emphasizes its ancientindigenous heritage in their openingceremonies, the Games were always intendedas an announcement of their successful andsuccessive achievement of modernity, a comingout party and rite of passage into the modernworld, and as a welcome into that world by themodern Olympic Movement (Black & Peacock,2011; Collins, 2012). Indeed, six months beforethe start of the Tokyo Games, on 28 April 1964,Japan was accepted into the club of richdeveloped nations, the Organization forEconomic Co-operation and Development(OECD, 2020).

Each of Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing enjoyed aconstruction boom the likes of which theirpeoples had never previously experienced.Whiting (2014) details Tokyo’s reconstruction,while Bridges (2008) describes Seoul’sremodeling. Yet, the transformation of Beijingwas arguably more impressive. In just sevenyears the city built and refurbished 37 sportingarenas, including the iconic Bird’s NestOlympic Stadium, extended its subway system,completed a light rail system, and constructedmore than 318 km of city streets – including 23roads around the Olympic sites, two new cityring roads, and high-tech traffic controlsystems. The city also built a new airportterminal and extended the toll road to theairport (Sands, 2008).

For all three cities the Olympic legacy has beenprofound, producing an efficient, cleaner andmore vibrant urban area that helped launcheach country into the next stage of its moderndevelopment. Under the Beijing SustainableDevelopment Plan, implemented as a part ofthe Olympic legacy, there have been lastingimpacts economically and environmentally forBeijing and China more broadly, includingconsiderable investments in anti-pollution andcleansing technologies, with for instance thereplacement of up to 47,000 taxis and 7,000diesel engine buses by vehicles that wouldmeet EU emissions standards (Sands, 2008).

Nevertheless, it is inescapable that, though theOlympic Games are both product and symbol ofthe progressive idealism of modernity, they arealso complicit in its outcome in environmentalbreakdown. If modernization is poweredoriginally and primarily by the combustion ofcoal , then the Olympic Games are anaccelerant; akin to throwing gasoline on thatfire. Here’s how.

The Olympic City as Global Field

Tokyo as Global Field. Photo: PeterMatanle, 16 January 2020.

More than anything associated with modernityand modernization, the Olympic Games is acelebration and invocation of the modern globalcity. No longer walled and arranged around acastle for collective defence, and so much morethan a market for economic exchange, the cityhas become the fountainhead for theexpression of identity and fulfillment of creativeimpulses, a space for coming together and

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realizing collective values, and a place for thesatisfaction and achievement of individualdesires and ambitions. Hence, although the cityis both a spatial and a social environment, it isalso the primary ‘field’ of human endeavorwithin which people cooperate, negotiate, andcompete for the resources they need for theachievement of their self-realisation; theultimate expression of the individual self inmodern society (Bourdieu, 1993; Giddens,1991; Matanle 2003). Small wonder, then, thatthe modern Olympic Games are awarded to acity and not a country. Indeed, the awarding ofthe Games confers global status on a city likeno other marker, and transforms it into a globalfield, attracting people, capital and resourcesfrom every corner of the world, intensifyinginter-urban competition to form a globalmetropolitan hierarchy, with Olympic hosts atits apex.

Inevitably, all this activity imposes anenormous and growing imprint on the Earth.Already, 75% of natural resources areconsumed, and 80% of anthropogenicgreenhouse gases produced, in cities (EMF,2019). Considering the visual and biologicali m p a c t o f m a t e r i a l e x t r a c t i o n a n drecombination, such as in the cities we buildand industries we run, it is fair to say thathumans are the primary geomorphic agent onEarth and that we are now firmly in theAnthropocene epoch (Hooke, 1994; Steffen,Crutzen & McNeill, 2007; Thomas, 2014; CircleEconomy).

Indeed, our physical impact on the Earth isaccelerating, even as we begin to grasp thegravity of our circumstances (McNeill &Engelke, 2016). The Keeling Curve2 shows nosign of flattening, passing the historicallyimportant 415ppm atmospheric concentrationof CO2 on 11 May 2019, despite the promisesmade in Paris in December 2015 to reduce ouroutput of greenhouse gases. And the proportionof materials consumed worldwide that isrecycled is currently falling, from 9.1 to 8.6 per

cent in the year to 2017 (Circle Economy,2020).

Tokyo is arguably the greatest modern city ofall. It is certainly the largest, with around 38million people – 30 per cent of the country’spopulation – residing in its metropolitan area,which covers a land area of more than13,300km2 (UNDESA, 2017: 14; StatisticsBureau, 2020)3. Despite national-scaledepopulation since 2008, Tokyo continues todraw in people and resources from the rest ofJapan, creating a zero-sum game of depletionfor the rest of the country (Matanle, 2018).Rather than the stated intention of using theGames to assist with regional rebalancing andreconstruction in tsunami affected regions inthe north-east, the 2020 Games are associatedinstead with reinforcing and intensifyingJapan’s spatial imbalances (Macnaughtan,2019; Matanle, 2013; Reconstruction Agency,2017).

Although the 2020 Games promise a reducedenvironmental impact, with many venues suchas Tange Kenzo’s 1964 gymnasium refurbished,and materials recycling is a stated priority, it isunlikely that they will deviate fundamentallyfrom previous patterns. Indeed, discountingoperating expenses, this year’s Games will bethe second most expensive summer games inhistory after Beijing, with the national andmetropolitan governments spending more thanUSD20 billion on stadia and infrastructure toprepare for the influx of visitors and showcaseTokyo as a modern global city without equal.

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To the south of Yoyogi Park, with theskyscrapers of Shinjuku to the north,

Tange Kenzo’s 1964 gymnasium is beingrefurbished for 2020.

Photo: Peter Matanle, 16 January 2020.

Are we deranged?

Urbanization continues relentlessly, with themost rapid growth occurring in Asia (UNDESA,2017). The gravitational attraction of cities as afield for the enactment of human desires andambitions grows ever stronger. As Asia growsand prospers so Asian cities will feed and fulfilAsian people’s desires to express theiridentities and achieve individual self-realizationin modernity.

It is not Europe, where the Olympic Gamesoriginated, but in Asia, where their associationwith modernity and modernization hasdeveloped its strongest logic. Is it therefore anycoincidence that it is in Asia where the problemof anthropogenic environmental breakdown isdeveloping most acutely, with the commitmentof its governments to accelerated economictransformation and its confluence with thelargest populations on Earth?

‘Are we deranged?’ asks Indian novelist AmitavGhosh (2016). Looking back on 2020 futuregenerations might think we were. But Idisagree. I think we’re struggling to find a wayto do what’s right while continuing to followour desires, and we’re finding that the two areno longer compatible. Under present conditionsit appears impossible for a city to host theOlympic Games and not contribute toenvironmental breakdown. Yet it is alsoimpossible not to hold the Olympic Games; welove them too much. So we carry on, hopingthat somehow all will be OK.

Maybe modernity isn’t progress at all but adead end; a sort of solipsism. That in our focuson the achievement in the present moment of

our individual identities, hopes, and dreams wehave forgotten, or even refuse to countenance,that we are all connected – not just with eachother in the present, but with every living thingthat has or ever will walk this Earth. Every daywe momentarily disbelieve that our actionshave histories and consequences and we forgetto take responsibility for ourselves and to ceaseoffloading it onto nature.

Sometimes I feel like we are on a runaway traincareening towards inevitable disaster. But assomeone who also wants to enjoy theopportunities that life offers me, and who alsoloves the Olympic Games, who am I tobegrudge anyone their chance to visit Tokyothis summer and enjoy the greatest humanspectacle on Earth? I hope everyone who doeswill have a wonderful time; and I will bewatching and celebrating too, for now at least.

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Arrhenius, S. (1896) On the influence ofcarbonic acid in the air upon the temperatureon the ground, Philosophical Magazine, 41:237–276.

Arrhenius, S. (1908) Worlds in the Making: TheEvolution of the Universe (Trans. H. Borns),London: Harper Books.

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Bourdieu, P. (1993) The Field of CulturalProduction, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bridges, B. (2008) The Seoul Olympics:Economic Mirac le Meets the World ,International Journal of the History of Sport, 25(14): 1939–1952.

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Campbell , K.M. (Ed.) (2008) ClimaticCataclysm: The Foreign Policy and NationalSecurity Implications of Climate Change,Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

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Matanle, P.C.D. (2003) Japanese Capitalismand Modernity in a Global Era: Re-fabricatingLifetime Employment Relations, London:Routledge.

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This article is a part of the Special Issue: Japan’s Olympic Summer Games -- Past andPresent, Part I. See the Table of Contents here.

Peter Matanle is Senior Lecturer and Director of Research and Innovation at the School ofEast Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, UK. His research and teaching interests are in thesocial and cultural geography of the Asia-Pacific, focusing on Japan.p.matanle@sheffield.ac.uk

Notes1 UNFCCC = United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; COP = Conferenceof the Parties (to the UNFCCC).

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2 See here for the full and most up to date representation of the Keeling Curve.3 Calculated by adding the land area of the four prefectures of Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama,Kanagawa.