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Confronting the Olympic Paradox: Modernity and Environment at a Crossroads in Downtown Tokyo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Peter Matanle
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Abstract

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The 2020 Summer Olympics will be the hottest ever; due to a combination of climate change and scheduling them when Tokyo is at its most sweltering. Cities have been transformed, with the Games used by governments to unite citizens behind patriotic visions of national success and project a modernist image of a city and nation on the leading edge of global progress. This is the Olympic paradox-being uniquely symbolic of modernity while also complicit in modernity's outcome, including the systematic depletion of the Earth's resources, our destruction of its habitats, and pollution of the biosphere with emissions and effluents which together threaten the sustainability of life on Earth.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , February 2020 , e17
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2020

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