Beyond the boundary Commentary When a pandemic takes grip, even cricket knows when to stop buying its own hype. By Andrew Fidel Fernando
The Fukushima Disaster and the Tokyo Olympics Commentary Nine years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, fundamental issues remain unresolved. Many domestic critics saw the Olympics as a ploy to distract from the nuclear disaster. The larger question remains: Should a country with an ongoing nuclear disaster be hosting these games? By Koide Hiroaki
Perspectives Asia #9: Two Sides of the Medals This issue of Perspectives Asia examines the intersections of sports and politics. We look at how, through sports, identities are shaped, myths and heroes are born, and unconventional truths are buried.
Editorial This should have been a summer like no other for Tokyo. After 56 years, the Games of the XXXII Olympiad and the Paralympic Games should have returned to the city to bolster former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s grand project to revitalize Japan. Like in 1964 – when Tokyo, as the first Asian city to host the Olympics, sought to demonstrate to the world that it had emerged from the post-war period and transformed into a strong, liberal democracy – the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were meant to show the nation and the world that ‘Japan is back’ and that the 2011 Fukushima triple catastrophe was a thing of the past.
We are the Champions Feature Myanmar is among Asia’s poorest countries, with limited resources to promote sports. Disabled athletes form a particularly marginal group among sports enthusiasts in the country. But they work hard and some of them have been remarkably successful in international sports competitions, especially the ASEAN Para Games. This photo story tells of their lives in training. The images were taken at various times between 2017 and 2019 at the training facility of the Myanmar Paralympic Sports Federation in North Dagon Township, Yangon, which houses about 150 athletes.
Asia at the Olympics Infographics The modern Olympic Games are the foremost international sporting events in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a variety of competitions. The Summer and Winter Olympic Games are each held once every four years, with an interval of two years between them. The first modern Olympics were held 124 years ago in 1896 in the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, Greece. At those Games, 241 athletes from 14 nations competed in 43 events. Many economic, political and technological advancements later, a whopping 11,091 athletes from 216 nations were set to compete in 339 events at the latest edition of the Summer Games in Tokyo in 2020. Unfortunately, these Games were postponed to 2021, due to the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic.
The Tokyo Olympics: East Asian Sporting Mega-events Revisited Feature East Asians take the hosting of major sporting events very seriously. The three previous Summer Olympics in East Asia all had symbolic meanings for the respective hosts and for the Olympic movement. But the Coronacrisis has upset Japanese ambitions for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, bringing not just additional socio-economic costs but casting a shadow over Prime Minister Abe's political legacy. By Brian Bridges
