Tokyo 1964

Tokyo 1964 is the first Olympics in Asia. The bullet train, a satellite broadcast, a stadium that looks like the future. Japan, two decades after the war, uses the Games as a national reopening. Volleyball, judo, a marathon on the streets — the pictures go worldwide in a new way.

The IOC had been a European club with American money. Tokyo proves a non-Western city can run the machine and improve it. Later Seoul, Beijing, and others walk through that door.

The 1964 Games are infrastructure as sport. They tell every later host that the Olympics are a development project with medals attached.