More Than Medals

Front matter

A HISTORY OF THE PARALYMPICS AND DISABILITY SPORTS IN POSTWAR JAPAN

MORE THAN MEDALS

MORE THAN MEDALS

Contents

List of Figures ix Acknowledgments xi List of Abbreviations xv

Note from Author xvii

Introduction: The Paralympic Movement in Japan: An Imperfect Success Story 1

CHAPTER 1 Tokyo’s Other Games The Origins and Impact of the 1964 Paralympics

That it has been possible to hold the 1964 International Stoke Mandeville Games for the Paralysed in Tokyo is due greatly to the understanding of our Japanese friends, who had the vision to recognize the significance of these Games not only as an important sports Movement but as a beam of hope for disabled people all over the world. The Japanese Organizing Committee, under the Chairmanship of Mr. Y. Kasai, have undertaken their great task with an enthusiasm, efficiency and generosity which commands our admiration and gratitude. It is gratifying to

know they have had the full support of their Government and many leading Japanese organizations.

Ludwig Guttmann, 1964

In his words of welcome to the competitors in what became known as the Tokyo Paralympics, Ludwig Guttmann, founder of the Stoke Mandeville Games for the Paralysed, offered high praise for the vision and enthusiasm of the host country. Four years earlier, however, when the Paralympic Games concluded in Rome on September 25, 1960, a mere handful of people in Japan were aware of their existence, and even though preparations for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics were already underway, few people in Japan or elsewhere would have believed that Tokyo would ever host this international sporting event for athletes with physical disabilities. At the time, Olympic venues were not required or even expected to host the Paralympics, and Japan was not a country renowned for progressive treatment of the disabled. Indeed, many in Japan dismissed the very notion of sports for those with disabilities as a preposterous and even dangerous idea.' Yet only a few years later, Japan became the third country—and the first outside Europe—to host the Paralympic Games.” This chapter explores how this remarkable turn of events came about.

With Tokyo’s selection as the host for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the city was set to be the first in the world to hold the International Paralympic Games on two occasions, a development that inspired increased interest in Japan’s earlier experience hosting the Paralympics.’ Despite this renewed attention and the obvious significance of the 1964 Games to the history of disability sports more generally, Japan’s first Paralympic Games have remained little known, especially for those without access to Japanese-language materials.* Japanese accounts themselves tend to fall into two categories: official or institutional reports and general overviews of the Tokyo Paralympics; both focus almost exclusively on key organizers whose vision and effort helped overcome various obstacles to bring the Paralympics to Japan.’ Although these individuals played pivotal roles, closer consideration of the events leading up to the Games reveals a more complex picture involving intersecting personal, local, national, and transnational actors and motivations, all of which culminated in intense pressure to hold the Games in Tokyo immediately following the Summer Olympics.

In the end, the 1964 Tokyo Paralympics attracted hundreds of athletes, thousands of spectators, widespread media attention, and major sponsorships. They were widely hailed as a success and credited with giving “hope, courage, and self-confidence to Japan's physically disabled." As the first Paralympic Games held outside Europe, they also had a profound impact on the emerging Paralympic Movement by demonstrating its growing international appeal, strengthening its association with the Olympic Games, and promoting an expanded multi-disability approach to disability sports. Nevertheless, analyses of the Games themselves and especially the ways in which Paralympic organizers sought to present them in Japan point to the need for a more nuanced understanding of their impact that goes beyond simple claims of success and progress.

Given the relatively limited nature of existing scholarship on the Tokyo Paralympics, it is not surprising that there has not yet been proper attention to how these Games, and especially their participants, were represented in Japan. Studies of more recent Paralympic coverage have highlighted the importance of close examinations of such representations, because it has become increasingly clear that the amount of attention these events receive can be less significant than the ways in which the Games and their athletes are portrayed. As a number of scholars have demonstrated, representations of Paralympic athletes, especially those appearing in the mass media, have often relied on images and descriptions that reinforce medicalized understandings of disability. Athletic involvement and achievement have tended to be framed in terms of “overcoming” disability through sports, a reductionist approach that presents

Paralympians as victims who warrant pity or as “super-crips” who merit attention because they have not allowed their disability to prevent them from pursuing and achieving success.’ Research has also shown that nationalism, gender, forms of impairment, and the types of sport also play a significant role in shaping representations of disability sports.*

As explored later in the chapter, the representations of athletes participating in the 1964 Tokyo Paralympics share several similarities with those from more recent disability sports events. But analyses of the materials associated with the 1964 Games also offer insights that go beyond adding a “non-Western” perspective to the existing scholarship. For one, an examination of what the Japanese public was seeing in the early 1960s serves as a useful reminder that the representations we often encounter today have a history. Because Japan was among the earliest countries to host the Paralympics and did so at a time when few in the country were familiar with disability sports, the Tokyo Games provide a unique vantage point for exploring how a large population was introduced to the Paralympic Movement and its ideals. In other words, a study of these Games can help explain how patterns of representation and stereotypes took shape.

The history of the Tokyo Paralympics clearly demonstrates that the perceptions and approaches that Paralympic organizers adopted were pivotal in shaping these early representations. Their emphasis on sports as a means of rehabilitation ultimately helped re-inscribe preexisting medicalized views of the disabled body, views particularly apparent in official reports and promotional commentaries. At the same time, disability advocates and Paralympic athletes were able to take advantage of the prominence of the Tokyo Paralympics to articulate and display alternate understandings of disability to a large audience, laying the groundwork for Japan’s domestic disability sports movement and a broader, gradual shift in perceptions of disabled athletes in postwar Japan. At the core of these efforts was a form of co-constitution, a negative nationalism of sorts, that praised the “brightness” of foreign Paralympians while at times demeaning Japanese athletes to highlight the flaws in Japanese approaches to disability in an attempt to initiate changes. Although these efforts ultimately seem to have helped foster such changes, they also complicate any effort to see the Tokyo Paralympics as a clear-cut “beam of hope for disabled people all over the world."? Analyses of the writings of Paralympic promoters from the periods before, during, and after the 1964 Paralympics also make it clear that for many, the significance of the Paralympics as a “beam of hope” was also secondary to their role as an arena for evaluating Japan’s standing in the global community.

“The De Coubertin of the Paralysed”

Looks to Japan

Before turning to an examination of the Tokyo Paralympics themselves, it will be useful to situate them in the broader history of the Paralympic Movement, which in 1964 was still in its earliest stages. Without a doubt, Ludwig Guttmann, the man Pope John XXIII once described as “the De Coubertin of the paralysed,” is a critical figure in that early history.'° Guttmann, a respected Jewish neurologist, hospital director, and full professor of neurology, fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and resettled in England. After he spent several years at Oxford University, the British government commissioned him in 1943 to be the director of the newly established National Spinal Injuries Unit at the Ministry of Pensions Hospital, Stoke Mandeville, which was located roughly 65 kilometers outside London. Guttmann’s well-documented activities as director at Stoke Mandeville and his revolutionary emphasis on movement and activity for people with severe spinal injuries quickly led to the integration of sports as a critical component of his patients’ total rehabilitation programs." Competitive sports were part and parcel of Guttmann’s approach at Stoke Mandeville from the beginning, but the origins of the Paralympics are often dated to July 29, 1948, when Guttmann helped organize the first Stoke Mandeville Games. What began as a small public archery competition between two teams of paraplegics quickly became an annual tradition. With each passing year, the Stoke Mandeville Games (which used varying names during these early years) attracted more competitors and added new sports. In 1952, a Dutch team participated, making the Stoke Mandeville Games truly international.’ As many, including Pope John XXIII, have observed, Guttmann’s Stoke Mandeville Games were often associated with the Olympic Movement. Whether intentional or fortuitous, the first Stoke Mandeville Games occurred in 1948 on the same day as the opening ceremony for the London Olympic Games. Throughout the early years of the Stoke Mandeville Games, Guttmann repeatedly referenced the Olympic Movement, citing it as both an inspiration and a goal: he hoped paraplegics would one day compete in the Olympics. After the International Olympic Committee awarded the Fearnley Cup to the International Stoke Mandeville Games “for actions in keeping with the true spirit of Olympism,” Guttmann and other organizers began exploring the possibility of holding the ninth International Stoke Mandeville Games in Rome immediately following the 1960 Olympics. The result of their efforts, an event that is now officially recognized as the first Paralympic Games, involved nearly 370 athletes from twenty-two countries competing in twelve different events and using many of the same facilities that the Olympic athletes had used only a few weeks before.

With the success of the Rome Paralympics and the ongoing growth of the annual Games held at Stoke Mandeville, it might seem only natural that Guttmann and other organizers of those Games would look to Tokyo, the host for the next Olympics, as the site for the thirteenth International Stoke Mandeville Games. In fact, one brief English-language account describing the origins of the Tokyo Paralympic Games notes that Guttmann was “keen to stage the Games again at the same venue as the Olympic Games in 1964, in Tokyo.”” Another account comments specifically on the “self-assurance” of Stoke Mandeville organizers and their widespread belief that the “International Games really could be exported to any country.”'®

Japanese sources reveal much less optimism. In 1960 there was, in fact, very little reason for anyone, including the organizers in Rome, to believe that Tokyo would be willing or able to host the Paralympics. For one thing, no Japanese athletes or official observers had ever participated in or attended the International Stoke Mandeville Games. Although the International Paralympic Committee website claimed that support for Guttmann's plan to hold the Paralympic Games in Tokyo “was boosted by the positive reactions of Japanese observers who visited the 1960 Games in Rome,” the sole Japanese who actually witnessed these Games was Watanabe Hanako, whose presence at the Paralympics appears to have been partly accidental; she was there because she was married to the chief of the Rome bureau for Japan's Kyodo News Service." Fortunately, Watanabe was also a scholar of labor and welfare policies, and she took an avid interest in the Games.'? She reportedly spoke with Guttmann about the possibility of holding a similar event in Tokyo, but this discussion was certainly not an official commitment.” Perhaps it goes without saying, but a conversation with an enthusiastic individual spectator hardly seems like the best foundation for planning a major international sporting event in a foreign country. There is also good reason to suspect that Guttmann may have been skeptical of Watanabe's statement of interest. Only a few months earlier, in February 1960, Nakamura Yutaka, a 32-year old doctor from southwestern Japan, traveled to Stoke Mandeville to observe the facilities and study Guttmann's methods. According to Nakamura, Guttmann greeted him rather harshly: “So you're Japanese? Several Japanese have come here already. All of them have said that they want to imitate what we are doing here, and then they go back to Japan. So far, not one ofthem has followed through and done it." Nakamura acknowledged that Guttmann's statement was probably accurate, and Watanabe herself indicated that Guttmann had offered similar complaints when she spoke with him about her interest in bringing the Paralympics to Japan.” If Guttmann had so little faith in Japan's medical professionals, the very people who would seem most likely to share his ambitious goals, it raises an important question: Why was he so "keen" to hold the International Stoke Mandeville Games four years later in a country that seemed to have minimal interest in or commitment to sports for the disabled?

In many respects, Guttmann's desire to hold the Games in Tokyo makes perfect sense; these Games were simply the next logical step in his broader agenda. If the Paralympics were to continue to grow, develop, and gain prestige, then they had to go to Tokyo: they had to follow wherever the Olympics led. It also seems plausible, given Guttmann's record, that Japan's seeming lack of interest in disability sports itself would make it a particularly appealing host site. He was certainly not one to avoid a challenge, and if the Paralympics could be held successfully in Tokyo, it would demonstrate that the Stoke Mandeville Games could, in fact, be exported anywhere—even outside Europe or to countries without a strong history of involvement in disability sports. Moreover, Guttmann's encounters with the various Japanese doctors who had visited Stoke Mandeville pointed to latent interest in his approaches to sports and rehabilitation. A large-scale event such as the Paralympics could garner greater attention for his ideas and help them take root in Japan.

Japanese source materials also indicate that Guttmann and his Stoke Mandeville Games were not the only forms of disability sports attracting attention in Japan in the years before the first Tokyo Games. Sporting events in Japan for those with hearing impairments dated from 1918, and those for the visually impaired were launched in the 1920s. Many of these events were local or national events tied to Japan's specialized schools for visually or hearing impaired students, and they seemed to have had only limited connections to international organizations or developments. In that sense, these early examples of sports events shared similarities with localized events hosted for other disability groups in places such as Tokyo, Saitama, and Nagano in the years following World War II.” Recent archival discoveries and scholarship have also revealed a variety of sports events organized during the war for Japan's veterans with disabilities, an intriguing and still developing story examined further in chapter 3. All of these events suggest that Guttmann was pitching his particular disability sporting event to a country with more exposure to disability sports than it might first appear.

In fact, by the early 1960s, a handful of Japanese medical experts interested in rehabilitation had established relationships with specialists outside of Great Britain who were actively promoting sports for those with disabilities other than spinal injuries.” Japanese organizers of the 1964 Games seem to have been in regular contact with a group of specialists that included Gerd Brinkmann, Hanz

Lorenzen, and Norman Acton, who eventually became head of the International Sports Organization for the Disabled (ISOD).? In July 1963, at Acton’s urging, Japan dispatched a team of athletes to participate in what various Japanese sources identify as the First International Sports Festival for the Disabled held in Linz, Austria.” Unfortunately, this early sports festival, which was likely the world's first international multi-disability sports event (though one that did not include athletes with spinal cord injuries), appears to have attracted little scholarly notice, so further consideration of its relationship to the Stoke Mandeville Games must await further research. That said, Japanese participation in Austria highlighted the fact that Tokyo's would-be organizers were willing to engage with any and all forms of disability sports, an approach that would, as outlined later, result in a structure for the Tokyo Paralympics unlike any previous Stoke Mandeville Games.

It is also apparent that the years leading up to the Tokyo Games were marked by simmering tensions in the emerging disability sports movement. Details are murky, but these tensions reached a boiling point during the June 1963 meeting of the International Working Group for Disabled Sport, where unspecified events launched a dispute between Guttmann and Gerd Brinkmann, who was serving as president of the Deutchen Versehrtensportverbandes (DVS), the organization that represented Germany at the Stoke Mandeville Games. The dispute proved serious enough that Guttmann resigned from the Working Group and the DVS opted to boycott the 1964 Stoke Mandeville Games in Tokyo.” These behind-the-scenes tensions and Japanese organizers’ manifest interest in potentially competing approaches to disability sports both point to the distinct possibility that Guttmann and other promoters of the Stoke Mandeville Games were experiencing added pressure in the early 1960s to ensure that their Games were represented in Tokyo. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that Guttmann wanted to hold the thirteenth International Stoke Mandeville Games in Tokyo, but as he acknowledged as the Games began in 1964, his goals and plans were ultimately dependent on the actions and interests of those in Japan.

From Zero to Paralympics in Four Years

On the Japanese side in 1960, the prospects for the 1964 Paralympics did not look promising. Very few people even seemed aware of the existence of the Stoke Mandeville Games, and broader familiarity with disability sports was lacking at nearly all levels. There were no institutions, official or otherwise, in place for organizing an event of this sort in Japan. Even if the Paralympics were smaller and more informal than they are today, hosting them in Tokyo was going to be a monumental, and uncertain, undertaking. Among many other tasks, would-be organizers needed to establish new organizations, create basic public awareness, gain at least tacit approval from national and local leaders, generate funding, find and train Japanese participants, and, certainly not least of all, plan and host the Paralympic Games themselves—all in less than four years and at a time when attention and resources were overwhelmingly focused on preparations for the 1964 Olympics. An examination of how and why Japanese organizers decided to pursue these tasks offers insights into institution building and especially the ways in which several individuals mobilized existing social networks, the media, and the symbolic power of the imperial family to pursue their agendas.

According to official accounts as recorded in both the organizing committee’s Official Report on the Tokyo Paralympic Games and the Twentieth Anniversary History of the Japan Sports Association for the Disabled, the 1964 Games were rooted in a series of events that occurred in early 1961. In February, Okino Matao, a disabled navy veteran and director of the Japanese branch of the World Veterans Federation (WVF), received materials about disability sports from the head office in Paris. Interested in bringing greater attention to the topic in Japan, Okino joined with Hieda Masatora, the head of the National Disability Rehabilitation Training Center, to translate the materials and prepare a 157-page booklet titled “Sports for the Disabled.”*° Hieda’s interest in disability sports was not new; during a 1953 conference in Copenhagen, he acquired some written materials on the topic, including those by Hanz Lorenzen, one of the pioneers of multi-disability sports in Austria and West Germany. While visiting Europe in 1957, Hieda also observed a regional sporting event for the disabled in Hamburg, West Germany, an experience that inspired him to share what he learned after he returned to Japan, which may explain why Okino reached out to him in particular.” Despite their interest in promoting sports for the disabled, neither Okino nor Hieda expressed a desire to host the Paralympics at this point. Discussions about that possibility, however, soon followed.

On April 13, 1961, at a workshop on disability rehabilitation training, Watanabe Hanako gave a presentation about her experiences at the Rome Paralympics, and Okino followed with a talk titled “Elevating Sports for the Disabled in Japan.” Details about these presentations remain vague, but based on references to the discussions that followed, it is clear that at least one of them raised the possibility of hosting the Stoke Mandeville Games in 1964. Although Watanabe’s name largely disappears from official accounts soon after this meeting—a reflection of the male-dominated nature of the organization recording the history of this event—she undoubtedly played a pivotal role. According to Hieda, Watanabe later provided him and Okino with introductions to Ludwig Guttmann, and her personal connections to labor and welfare scholars, as well as the media, would have been useful to any nascent organization looking to gain publicity." Watanabe would continue to be an active supporter of the Paralympics, publishing frequently on the role that disability sports could play in improving Japanese approaches to disability. Her later advocacy aside, as the sole Japanese observer of the Rome Games, her firsthand knowledge would have been an invaluable resource in the early planning stages.

That is not to say, however, that Watanabe's and Okino's presentations translated into an instant commitment to the Games. Several of those present atthe April workshop raised concerns about funding and the difficulty ofhosting such an event without any institutions in place to do so. Dazai Hirokuni, who was attending as head of the Health and Welfare Ministry's Social Welfare Bureau, allegedly suggested, "This is great news for the disabled, but preparing to host [the Paralympics] will be a real problem. Why don't we just see today's meeting as the first steps in the right direction?" ? In other words, Dazai had no problem with the promotion of disability sports, but was not ready at that point to commit himself and, by extension, the Japanese government. He, and many others, needed to be convinced that holding these Games in Tokyo was both possible and worthwhile.

Unfortunately, some ofthe earliest attempts to forge the necessary institutions proved less than successful. In May 1961, Okino attended the international congress for the WVF in Paris, where he met with Guttmann. After returning to Japan, Okino held an informational meeting at which attendees agreed to form an organization for promoting disability sports in Japan, but remained reluctant about hosting the Paralympics.?? According to the official account from the Japan Disabled Veterans Association, those present felt that Japan needed to start by promoting disability sports at home before hosting an international event? In line with that approach in August 1961, representatives from twenty-four groups that worked with the disabled population formed the Association for the Promotion of Sports for the Disabled. With the bulk of its meetings focusing on bureaucratic minutiae, this organization proved ineffective, taking little concrete action toward achieving its mission.??

Just as early organizational efforts appeared to have stalled, a series of events reinvigorated the movement and sparked a new round of institution building. First, on October 22, 1961, Oita Prefecture, located approximately 1,000 kilometers from Tokyo on the island of Kyushu, hosted Japan's first competitive sporting event for the disabled. Organized by Dr. Nakamura Yutaka and

Hirata Atsushi, a prefectural government official, this groundbreaking event employed rules and approaches associated with international sports organizations, demonstrating that disability sports could work in Japan, despite the widespread belief to the contrary. Then, in March 1962, limuro Susumu, an executive officer from the Lions Clubs International, contacted Terada Muneyoshi, who was affiliated with the Asahi Shimbun Social Welfare Organization, and informed him that ifJapan were going to host the Stoke Mandeville Games, the Lions Clubs would provide “across-the-board support." ” The next month, Terada and several other social welfare leaders and rehabilitation specialists met at the offices of the Asahi Shimbun Newspaper Company, where they drafted a definitive plan of action that would bring the Paralympics to Japan. Those present agreed that they should work actively with the Lions Clubs, that they should launch a Preparatory Committee composed of a small core of selected individuals, and that the International Games held in Tokyo should be a multi-disability event, including athletes with paraplegia, blindness, hearing impairments, and other physical challenges. Immediately after this meeting, Terada shared these plans with several officials from the Health and Welfare Ministry, who on hearing that the Games would include participants with a range of disabilities, offered their full-fledged approval of the plan to establish a Preparatory Committee. Having secured the blessings of these officials, Terada and Ishijima Haruyuki, who was affiliated with the NHK Public Welfare Organization, began using their institutional contacts to notify relevant individuals about their plans, and on May 10, 1962, twenty-one individuals met to form the official Preparatory Committee.*4

Although Japan’s hosting of the Games themselves was still far from guaranteed, the creation of this committee in 1962 marked the country’s first official step toward that goal. Compared to only a year earlier, the changes in the level of both governmental and nongovernmental support the effort received were striking, especially given that one of the officials now giving his full-fledged approval was Dazai, whose lack of enthusiasm for hosting the Games had been readily apparent in early 1961. Clearly something had changed.

For one, the idea of hosting the Paralympics had proven to be more than the fleeting dream of a handful of enthusiasts; supporters continued to organize, events continued to be held, and more and more people seemed to be taking notice of disability sports, which raises a second key difference. By 1962 individuals and groups outside the medical or rehabilitation fields, including the Lions Clubs, the Asahi Shimbun Social Welfare Organization, and the NHK Public Welfare Organization, were expressing an interest in bringing the Paralympics to Japan.

The official accounts remain largely silent on the factors that motivated such groups to offer their support, though recollections from participants suggest that Ujiie Kaoru, the deputy director of the National Center for the Disabled, and Dr. Nakamura Yutaka both played key roles in lobbying for support from nongovernmental groups.” As for the Lions Clubs, the organization's long-standing commitment to the visually impaired may offer some explanation, and support for disability sports also fit well with the health- and welfare-oriented missions of both of the other organizations.?* Regardless of their specific motivations, the support from all three of these organizations promised significant benefits for the would-be organizers of the Paralympics. As an established institution with branches throughout Japan, the Lions Clubs could serve as a conduit for fostering popular awareness and raising much-needed funds. The other two organizations offered social networks of their own, but perhaps more importantly, they provided links to national media outlets: the Asahi newspaper and the NHK radio and television networks. With this increased popular, institutional, and media backing, the emergence of official support seems less surprising.

In addition to increased support of various sorts, one of the other key developments associated with the creation ofthe Preparatory Committee in 1962 was the explicit commitment to hosting the Paralympics as a multi-disability international sporting event. At that time, there was no precedent for such an event; the Rome Games, like all the International Stoke Mandeville Games before them, had only included athletes with spinal injuries. Unfortunately, available sources do not reveal who proposed this approach for Tokyo's Games or why they did so. Given the connections between some of the organizers and promoters of multi-disability sports in Europe, it seems feasible that some in Japan and perhaps abroad saw the Tokyo Games as an opportunity to unify disability sports by combining Guttmann's established approach with the multi-disability formats championed by Lorenzen, Acton, and others associated with the emerging ISOD. For instance, Nakamura's biographers suggested that by 1962 he was convinced by his interactions with Lorenzen to approach Guttmann about the need to provide more sports-related opportunities for other disability groups. The tantalizingly vague nature of the references to these interactions makes it difficult to determine whether they preceded or followed plans unfolding in Tokyo.*” The Japanese commitment to hosting a multi-disability event may also have reflected the agendas of such groups as the Lions Clubs, which had pledged their support, or of others that might be inclined to do so ifthe event involved a broader spectrum of athletes with disabilities. We might also speculate that this approach was a possible manifestation of pressure—whether actual or perceived—from the Health and Welfare

Ministry to hold an event serving a larger disabled population. Evidence of such pressure can be seen in a July 1961 Yomiuri shimbun newspaper article about the possibility of holding the Paralympics in Tokyo. Along with details about the purpose of the Games and the earlier, largely unsuccessful efforts to promote them in Japan, the article quoted an unnamed ministry source stating that even though it could not presently agree to host a “Paralympics only for those with spinal cord injuries,” the ministry wholeheartedly supported the development of “sports for all disabled” in Japan and was planning to study the issue further in the coming year.?? Given these public pronouncements, it makes sense that Terada made a particular point of mentioning the multi-disability element to Health and Welfare Ministry officials when seeking their approval. Opening the event to more participants would seem to satisfy any number of stakeholders. Although the specific reasons behind this early Japanese commitment to hosting a multi-disability event remain unclear, it ultimately gave the Tokyo Paralympics a structure unlike any before or since.

As significant as the establishment of the Preparatory Committee was, in many ways its primary purpose was to create another committee: the official, government-sanctioned committee for organizing the Paralympics themselves. As a first step in that process, the Preparatory Committee members sought out a new leader, Kasai Yoshisuke, who was serving as chair of the Association for the Promotion of Social Welfare. As a former Health and Welfare Ministry official, Kasai was almost certainly selected because of his background and the influence that came with it. In particular, during the Allied occupation following World War II, Kasai was instrumental in the conversion of military rehabilitation centers to civilian use and was also closely involved in the drafting and implementation of the 1949 Law for the Welfare of Physically Disabled Persons.? Despite these credentials, Kasai appears to have had little previous interest in or exposure to disability sports before the summer of 1961, when he witnessed a sports event for the disabled while visiting Germany. The very fact that one of the key leaders in Japan’s disability sports movement had minimal familiarity with such sports before 1960 exemplifies the challenges facing efforts to bring the Paralympics to Tokyo. As chairman of the organizing committee, Kasai quickly overcame this initial lack of familiarity and would frequently serve as the public face for the Tokyo Games in both official and popular venues. He continued to be a tireless promoter of disability sports long after the Games ended.^