＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:https://skawa68.com/
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
The 2019 NHK Taiga Drama “Idaten – Tokyo Olimpic Banashi” has been a huge flop and a disaster, recording the lowest ratings in the Taiga’s history, and I believe it may have caused no small amount of damage to the scriptwriter, Kudo Kankuro.
Just recently, I wrote an article titled “‘Idaten’: Considering the Causes of Low Viewer Ratings and Countermeasures.
I think there is a better script.
So, I came up with my own “OLYMPIC STORY” based on the assumption that “if I were a producer in charge of NHK’s production”.
１．Choice of “era” and “protagonist” for NHK Taiga Drama
As for “period,” since most people are interested in the Sengoku period through the Edo period and the end of the Edo period through the Meiji Restoration, it is safe to take up this period.
As for the “main character,” it is safe to choose a famous historical figure. Since this is a long-running historical drama, an unknown protagonist would not have enough material to last for a year. It is no exaggeration to say that no one knows about an Olympic athlete unless he or she is a gold medalist or a medalist comparable to that. If it is someone who abstained during the race, like this year’s main character, Shiso Kanakuri, it will not generate any excitement.
If you feature any other “era” or “protagonist,” it is essential that you make a special effort to demonstrate a “spirit of service to the viewers.
２．It’s “disappointing” when something that is meant to lift the Olympic mood turns out to dampen it.
If the theme of the program was “Stories of Great Olympic Athletes,” there should have been an “omnibus format” featuring three groups of four Olympic athletes: Shuhei Nishida and Toshio Oe, famous for their “friendship medal legend” in pole vaulting; Hideko Maehata, a swimmer famous for her “Maehata Gambare,” and Hironoshin Furuhashi, known as the “Flying Fish of Fujiyama,” who swam in the swimming competition. I think there was a way to broadcast three independent stories (four months per story), two prewar and one postwar, in an “omnibus format.
（１）Shuhei Nishida (1910-1997) and Toshio Oe (1914-1941)
(Shuhei Nishida）
（Toshio Oe）
At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, two Japanese athletes reached the finals of the men’s pole vault.
There were five finalists, but after five hours of fierce competition, the American Medowth jumped 4m35cm to win the event. Shuhei Nishida and Toshio Oe both jumped 4m25cm to secure their medals.
After 9:00 p.m., during the ranking game to decide the second place, both competitors requested the judges to terminate the competition. The reason given was that the competition had been going on for a long time and “there should be no more competition between the same Japanese.
It was a request that they both thought would result in a silver medal. However, the judges decided that Nishida, who jumped 4m25cm in the first attempt, was placed second, and Oe, who jumped 4m25cm in the second attempt, was placed third.
When they went up to the podium at the awards ceremony, Nishida, who had placed second, gently sent Oe off to the second place podium with the hope that he would continue to do well in the future.
Thus, Oe was awarded with a bronze medal shining on his chest, standing on the second place podium.
When they returned home after the Olympics were over, they congratulated each other on their good performance and joined their silver and bronze medals together. This is the famous “Medal of Friendship.
After his athletic career ended, Shuhei Nishida was active as a referee and coach, and also served as president of the Japan Association of Athletics Federations and as a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee.
On the other hand, Toshio Oe was drafted into the army in 1939 and was killed in action in the battle of Luzon Island in the Philippines in 1941. He was only 27 years old.
（２）Hideko Maehata (1914-1995)
She is the daughter of a tofu maker in Wakayama Prefecture and learned to swim in the Kino River. In her fifth year of elementary school, she set a “new school record” in the 50m breaststroke, and in her second year of high school, she competed in the Pan-Pacific Women’s Olympics, winning the 100m breaststroke and finishing second in the 200m breaststroke.
At first, she planned to quit school and swimming to help out in the family business after graduating from the high school. However, the head of the school noticed her talent and encouraged her to enter Sugiyama Girls’ School (now Sugiyama Jogakuen) in Nagoya, a prestigious swimming school.
At the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, he competed in the 200m breaststroke and won the silver medal. At that time, the time difference from the gold medalist was 0.1 second.
Due to a family situation in which her parents died one after another, she thought of retiring after the Games, but the mayor of Tokyo at the time, Shujiro Nagata, who attended the celebration, said to her, “Why didn’t you win the gold medal? It was by 0.1 second.” He persuaded her with tears in his eyes, and she made up her mind to continue her career.
Encouraged by the expectations of those around her, she trained hard, swimming 20,000 meters a day for the rest of her career. In 1933, she set a new world record in the 200m breaststroke.
Three years later, in 1936, she competed in the 200 m breaststroke at the Berlin Olympics, and in a dead heat with Germany’s Genenger, won the gold medal by a mere 1 second.
NHK announcer Sansei Kasai, who was in charge of the radio play-by-play, began his report of the dead heat at midnight (Japan Standard Time) by saying, “Please don’t switch off. Then, as Maehata was engaged in a fierce dead heat with Genenger, he said, “Maehata, ganbare! Maehata ganbare! more than 20 times as Genenger and Maehata were engaged in a fierce dead heat.
She continued to break world records many times.
After her retirement, she worked as an employee of Sugiyama Jogakuen to train younger swimmers and made a great contribution to the popularization of swimming among the general public by organizing “mama-san swimming classes”.
（３）Hironoshin Furuhashi (1928-2009)
Immediately after the war ended, there was a sense of emptiness among the Japanese people, partly due to food shortages, but also because of their defeat in the war.
At such a time, he set a series of new world records in swimming, earning him the nickname “Fujiyama’s Flying Fish,” and greatly cheered up the nation.
At the 1947 Japan Championships, he set a time in the 400m freestyle that exceeded the world record of the time, although it was not an official record.
Japan, a defeated nation, was not allowed to participate in the 1948 London Olympics. This, I believe, is clearly against the original “Olympic spirit” and the “Olympic Charter,” which states that “those who are fighting should also stop fighting and participate in sports.
In the “Japanese Championships” held on the same day as the London 1948 Olympic swimming finals, he won the 400m freestyle and the 1500m freestyle in times faster than the London Olympic gold medalists and the world records of the time. He is a “fantastic gold medalist”.
In June 1949, Japan was finally allowed to “return to the International Swimming Federation. He was invited to participate in the U.S. National Championships held in Los Angeles in August of the same year, and won the 400m freestyle, 800m freestyle, and 1500m freestyle, setting “new world records”.
The American newspapers called him “The Flying Fish of Fujiyama,” and he became a hero after the competition.
Although he did not achieve the desired record at the 1952 Japan Championships, he competed in the Helsinki Olympics that year. However, the result was an eighth place finish in the 400m freestyle.
The reasons for his poor performance were that he was past his peak as an athlete and that he had contracted amoebic dysentery during a tour of South America in 1950 and suffered from frequent diarrhea during the Olympics.
At the Helsinki Olympics, NHK announcer Tsugio Iida, who was in charge of his 400m freestyle race, said, “Ladies and gentlemen of Japan, please do not blame Furuhashi. It is only with the great Furuhashi’s presence that we have today’s Olympic Games. Please look back at Furuhashi’s great footsteps. Please look back at Furuhashi’s great footsteps, and please welcome him with warmth, not only in the Japanese sports world, but also in the people of Japan.
When I hear stories like this, perhaps it is because I am now an old man like myself, but I understand his feelings so painfully that it brings tears to my eyes.
He later served as “President of the Japan Swimming Federation. He also served as president of the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) from 1990 to 1999.