In the absence of this summer’s Tokyo Olympics, why not dive into Japanese cinema instead, beginning with an Olympic classic…
This was supposed to be the month when all eyes would be on
Japan, with the presumably lavish festivities for the Tokyo Olympic Games due to kick off shortly. It’s rather surreal to imagine any such scenario now: perhaps, in a year’s time, the hype of an Olympics won’t feel like such an alien concept, though even that feels soon for such a different world to come back into being.
In the meantime, if you are feeling a Tokyo 2020-shaped hole in your life, there is a nostalgic solution. The Olympic Channel, amid its bevy of Games-related video content, has the magnificent Tokyo Olympiad available to stream for free. Kon Ichikawa’s ravishing, nearly three-hour official documentary of the 1964 event belongs in the pantheon of great sporting documentaries, shot and edited with seamless, balletic fluidity as it captures the concentration of athletes and the fever of spectatorship alike. (It’s as technically towering as Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 Olympia, minus the fascistic overtones; the Japanese government, hoping for something more conventionally rousing and patriotic, was unhappy with the result.) It’s certainly as transporting as anything you could hope to watch in this Olympic summer that never was.