Pre-Olympic Woes Reflect Nagano's Regional Differences

Today, the 1998 Winter Olympics begin in Nagano, Japan. Like their predecessor, the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway, these Games brought drama and controversy to their site city well before the athletes themselves arrived for warm-ups and trials. However, unlike personal battles like the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan face-off that captivated the international press for months, the controversies surrounding Nagano are more impersonal and business-like. They highlight, if not the difference between East and West, then at least the difference in national styles and preferences that the Olympics always, perhaps unwillingly, bring into focus.

The Games also provide Japan an opportunity it didn't anticipate needing when it won its bid to play host--a forum to prove its stability and status to the world in the face of the Asian economic collapse.

One of the larger controversies that almost forced the Games out of Nagano concerned downhill skiing. This dispute, resolved last December, dragged on for five years, creating obviously less-than-friendly relations between the Nagano Organizing Committee (NAOC) and the International Ski Federation (FIS). In brief, the NAOC, headed by Makoto Kobayashi, had been strongly opposed to a bid by the FIS to raise the start of the downhill event in Nagano by 120 meters to 1,800 meters. According to CNN, Kobayashi stated that doing so would "break environmental laws by putting it into a national park which covers part of the top of the mountain above the current downhill course."

The NAOC proposed a compromise to raise the start of the downhill course by 60 meters, as long as the new addition would be between the park and a chairlift that runs along the edge of the park. FIS had originally objected on the grounds that the skiing time for the current course--about one minute and 30 seconds--was too short to be a "true Olympic test". Additionally, FIS asked to use part of the restricted area on the grounds that recreational skiers were already using the part of the park that Kobayashi claimed previously to have rare plants that needed to be protected.

Kobayashi appeared at the end to be alone in his defiance of the FIS, with only one other supporter in the advisory body to support his stance. The three remaining members, including Japanese Olympic Committee president Hironoshin Furuhashi, have been "openly critical of the NAOC over the issue." Criticism has also come from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), but both the IOC and the FIS decided they would abide by Japan's decision, and the Games remained in Nagano.

Another controversy involved not how the Japanese think, but how we charge. VISA, a major sponsor of the Olympic Games, is coming to see that charge cards are not universal. In America, the magnetic strip is located on the back of the card; in Japan, that strip is located on the front. For this reason, there were only two machines in Nagano that previously accepted back-strip cards; VISA and the Japanese found themselves having to install new credit card processors that would accept foreign cards.

On the topic of sponsorship, it is interesting to note that of the 11 major corporate sponsors for the Games, only one of them--Panasonic--is a Japanese company. Most, like the United Parcel Service (UPS), are American companies looking to gain a stronger toe-hold in Japan through advertising, promotions and free services--along with putting the company name on everything they possibly can. In this time of economic crisis in East Asia, Japan especially needs to save face. Perhaps regaining economic trust is the best way to forget the scandals that have recently plagued the Hashimoto administration.

The Nagano Games, though not without their troubles, are the best way for Japan to show the world that the nation remains a major player in the international arena, if not only economically than culturally and socially as well.

The earlier controversies--the downhill event, the charge card issue, the flame continually being extinguished during its run through southern Japan, even the recent leftist mortar shell attack at Narita International Airport--are but the pre-Olympic warm-up. As the world turns to Nagano today, Japan will face its largest test.

Misasha C. Suzuki '99, a joint concentrator in social studies and East Asian studies, is co-president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Japan Society.