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The excellent well-illustrated official report of the Tokyo International Sports Week 1963.
With photo-cations in Japanese and English.
The Tokyo International Sports Week ("Don't call it the pre-Olympics," Japanese officials implored, although that is the name they gave it before they failed to get an Olympic Committee sanction) turned out to be a surprisingly successful dry run. Deliberately scheduled exactly 365 days before the opening of the XVIII Olympiad in 1964, the week was a half-sized facsimile of next year's Games, save that Emperor Hirohito was not there (Crown Prince Akihito stood in for him) and the Olympic flame was absent. Some 4,000 athletes from 35 countries participated, more than a dozen of them world-record holders. If individual performances did not come up to expectations, the Japanese organizers were ecstatic because of their triumphs over other problems: crowd control, transportation to and between a dozen sites 38 miles apart, housing and feeding of the athletes, interpreter services, the condition of the athletic facilities themselves—everything, in fact, but the weather.
27 x 23 cms, hardback, 124 pages.
1963
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