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Volleyball celebrates return to Olympic birthplace for Tokyo 2020
Looking back at volleyball’s Tokyo 1964 Olympic debut and the making of Japan’s volleyball heroines
With the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 volleyball competition underway, many in Japan and beyond will remember Tokyo 1964; the Olympic birthplace of volleyball and the Japan women’s national team’s historic gold-medal-winning performance which captured the hearts of a nation.
Volleyball’s illustrious history at the Games actually began at the Olympic Games Paris 1924 with a demonstration event performed by the USA. However, it would be a long 40-year wait – which included the founding of the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) in 1947 - for the sport which was booming in popularity worldwide to finally make its official Olympic debut.
Jul 17, 2021
With less than one week to go before the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, it feels appropriate to celebrate Japan’s participation in the games by looking back at some of the country’s most memorable moments over the years, including some surprise team victories and heroic individual performances.
It all began for Japan back in Stockholm in 1912. The country has been a part of all but two of the events since missing out in 1948 (along with Germany) due to its role in World War II, and boycotting Moscow 1980 in protest against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Since it appears we’ll all have to watch the pandemic-bedeviled 2021 Tokyo Olympics from our homes even the fans in Tokyo why not mix in some Olympic cinema with your at-all-hours sports viewing, and specifically a tale from the last time Tokyo hosted, no less?
The offbeat, mixed-style documentary “The Witches of the Orient” from French filmmaker Julian Faraut recounts the remarkable success of Japan’s formidable women’s volleyball team, a late-’50s/early-’60s serving-blocking-spiking powerhouse that once racked up a jaw-dropping 258 straight victories, most notably gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. It was the first year the Olympics showcased volleyball.
At IFFR 2021, two Japanese films provide complementary perspectives into the intersection of class and gender At first glance, the two films look quite different, and yet they succeed in drawing out what they see as certain fundamental features of the national temperament. Srikanth Srinivasan February 14, 2021 10:29:50 IST A still from Yukiko Sode s Aristocrats
Like several events over the past year, the 50th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) was reconceived in light of pandemic-imposed restrictions. In addition to a significant part of the proceedings taking place online, the festival is also split across February and June, with a host of repository screenings (online and off) and a special exhibition at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam offered for audiences in the interceding time.