Japan is off and running. It’s the first nation to formally inform the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of its candidacy for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, which will be decided in 2009.
Governor Shintaro Ishihara told the metropolitan assembly as early as last September, “we want to invite the Olympics to the capital Tokyo by any means as a catalyst to break the boxed-in feeling hanging over Japan”.
The assembly adopted a resolution in March to bid for the 2016 Games and set aside $850 million for the 2006-2007 financial year as reserves for a 2016 Olympics.
Ishihara called on the central government to divert resources to support a Tokyo Olympics rather than extending economic aid to China, which has “ostensibly matured as a nation”.
Fukuoka, in the south of Japan, is the only other domestic candidate and is seen as a token rival of Tokyo, which already has such world-class arenas as the Budokan, the Tokyo Dome and the Equestrian Park.
The Japanese Olympic Committee is choosing the Japanese candidate August 30 after receiving bid plans from Tokyo and Fukuoka by June 30.
A panel set up by the Tokyo metropolitan government to advise on an Olympic bid projected “the world’s most compact Games possible with 80 per cent of facilities within a radium of 10 kilometres”.
Kazihiro Goto, an official in charge of Olympic bid preparations said, “what we will need to build is, for example, a main stadium with some 80,000 seats which London plans to build”.
A group of architects and developers advised the redevelopment of two existing 1964 Olympic complexes in the city centre to turn one of them into a 100,000-seat main stadium.
Goto said the media centre or the athletes’ village will be built in an area vacated by the famous Tsukiji Fish Market, which the government is trying to move out of central Tokyo.
Japan’s IOC Vice President Chiharu Igaya said Tokyo’s bid will be difficult if the South Korean resort of PyeongChang wins the 2014 Winter Olympics, because of geographical distribution of the Olympics.
