In the early 2000s, the idea of Japan as culturally “cool” captured imaginations. Propelled by a government interested in marketing and selling Japan, products from video games to anime and manga were repackaged as embodying cultural cool. And global audiences were reminded that what they enjoyed consuming, from sushi to Pokémon, were of Japanese origin. The capital of Tokyo, now virtually synonymous with the nation as a whole, was to epitomize this “cool Japan” with its technological sophistication, sleek aesthetics, and cultural creativity as host of the 2020 Olympic Games. Despite disruption by the COVID-19 pandemic, what the games reflected vividly was how the Tokyo metropolitan region, tracing a general trend that dated back centuries, had grown almost inexorably in size and in political, economic, and cultural gravity. Not just in historical patterns but in so many ways – from a city center that remains inviolate to the spiral that radiates outward, from the low-rise wooden buildings in the low city to the names of neighborhoods – the past remains deeply woven into the richly textured pastiche of contemporary Tokyo.

As Japan rebuilt and regained its footing after the war, Tokyo reemerged as the engine and emblem of national progress – of not just recovery but economic growth. Leading up to the 1964 Olympic Games, the host city upgraded its physical infrastructure, erected tall buildings, and made sure Tokyo was clean and shiny to demonstrate to the world the nation’s rebirth as a remodernized, peaceful, and prosperous Japan. Over the course of the 1960s, as gross national income more than doubled and Japan became the second largest economy in the world, a middle class ideal took root of a nuclear family with a husband who worked a white-collar job, a wife who managed the home, and household income enough to purchase electric appliances and to save toward buying a home. Tokyo was at the vanguard of the embrace and the achievement of middle class aspirations, with urban living in a danchi or apartment complex within the grasp of more and more Tokyoites and the relatively affordable suburbs beckoning more and more people. But by the late 1960s, middle class dreams were also tinged with disappointment about cramped apartments, long commutes, and the environmental costs of high economic growth.

The biggest sports events in the world are the Olympics and the World Cup soccer tournament. These huge multinational spectacles are constructed around nationality: competitors represent their countries, each country gets one team, and national rivalries are encouraged. The Olympics and World Cup are remarkable examples of international cooperation and governance. And yet the organizations most responsible for global sports are not public international organizations. They are not public entities at all. The largest global sports spectacles, including the Olympics, the World Cup, the Tour de France, and many others, are controlled by private organizations that have governmental power in the sense that they regulate and constitute the domain of global sports. They have ultimate authority over who participates and on what terms. Their decision-making is usually invisible to the public and comes into view only at moments of unusual controversy such as the doping scandals and corruption. This chapter examines FIFA, the International Olympic Committee, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport. These are the private global agencies responsible for the football World Cup, the Olympic Games, and dispute resolution within the global sports domain.

Huang Hongjiu is a ninety-year-old former PRC athlete in swimming and water polo. Born and raised in Indonesia, he attended the World Festival for Youth and Students held in Berlin in 1951 – as a member of the Indonesian delegation. The delegation was invited to Beijing, where Chinese sports leaders then recruited Huang and several teammates to “return to the motherland” and help build a new state-sponsored swimming program. Over the next few years, Huang and the others learned Chinese and competed internationally for the PRC. This chapter seeks to understand how athletes such as Huang, and the networks within which they were embedded, were crucial to the Chinese party-state’s national project of the early 1950s. Athletes like Huang helped a nascent PRC initiate new state-sponsored sports programs and, through sport, solidify the new state’s participation in the Soviet-led socialist world. Tracing the lives of these athletes and early PRC sports networks shows how China’s national sports development was a thoroughly transnational project. This chapter also uses sport in order to argue more generally that a transnational perspective is needed to understand the early PRC.

Since the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, the High Jump has never been the same. That’s when Dick Fosbury accomplished the fabulous feat of sailing over the crossbar headfirst and backward to earn his coveted Gold Medal! Today, we take it for granted that Fosbury’s Flop has always been the “gold standard” style in the sport. But, it wasn’t. The “scissors” and the “straddle” jumps had been the two dominant styles. How did Fosbury develop this ungainly technique? Was it a stroke of genius? Did he experience a flash of insight – a so-called eureka moment? Was this revolutionary style his and his alone? How did Fosbury’s technique acquire its catchy alliterative moniker? The answers to these questions are quite surprising and force us to consider behavioral innovations such as Fosbury’s from an altogether different perspective – one that applies a natural science approach to both innovative and everyday behavior.

The butterfly is considered to be the most aggressively athletic of all swimming strokes. At least one contemporary author has deemed the history of the butterfly stroke to be particularly “murky.” Determining the origins of many behavioral innovations can indeed be difficult. However, it is now quite clear that The University of Iowa was the birthplace of the butterfly stroke. Coach David Armbruster and swimmer Jack Sieg originated the stroke in 1935, although it was not until 1956 that it was added to the Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia, as a separate competition. Recounting that long and interesting history underscores the importance of gritty persistence and systematic experimentation to achieving success in athletic contests as well as in daily life.

This chapter studies elite sport in Classical Athens and its relationship to war. It argues that this relationship explains why non-elite citizens support pro-sport policies.