The last time the Olympics were coming to Tokyo
CBC visited the host country to assess the state of sports before the 1964 Games began
The Olympic Summer Games are scheduled to open on July 23 this year after being postponed from 2020 due to the pandemic. But it won't be the first time the Japanese city hosts the Games.
That happened in October 1964, and CBC brought viewers pictures of the country and its sports scene just two weeks before they opened.
Torch to Tokyo was an hour-long TV special, aired by CBC on Sept. 27, 1964.
A preview from that week's CBC Times program schedule described the then-upcoming Games in Tokyo as "the largest and costliest ever held" involving "fantastically complicated plans."
Vancouver crew
According to the CBC Times program guide, a production crew from Vancouver visited the city in December of 1963 "to film civic preparations, athletes in training, and compare training methods."
The video excerpted above shows the Japanese as participants and spectators of a range of sports, from indoor skiing to baseball to ice hockey.
"On the terraced slope alongside the ski tow, this is also baseball weather," said the narrator, Ted Reynolds. "The pros, of course, play it at night before crowds of up to 60,000."
Hockey too
Ice sports were more recent imports to Japan.
Throngs of recreational skaters of all ages were seen at an indoor rink going around the ice clockwise.
"[The Japanese] are fast perfecting the skills of that once exclusively Canadian pastime: ice hockey," said Reynolds.
More scenes included fans watching a televised game between a Japanese university team and the national team of Australia.
"The fans love the game, especially when the home team wins," said Reynolds. "The home team is winning this one by a score of 17 to one."
