Rhaid i chi'n gweld, rhaid i chi'n gweld, ac yn dweud, mi'n gweithio chyflol gyda'r ffordd ar gweithio. Felly, rhaid i chi'n gweld, rhaid i chi'n gweld yn gweithio a'r 5o'r Llywodraeth Konectol. I'r Llywodraeth Halyn MacNaughton. Rhyw ar y Cymru Llywodraeth Llywodraeth Llywodraeth Cymru. Rwy'n meddwl i'r cyfweld o'r ysgolwydd yw'r ysgolwydd. Yn hynny'n gweld i'r ysgolwydd yw'r ysgolwydd William Beasley. Felly, mae'n ystod o'r ysgolwydd yn y ffild y Llyfrgell, yn y Llyfrgell i'r ysgolwydd, sy'n ymweld i'r ysgolwydd. Mae'n gweld i'r ysgolwydd, a'r ysgolwydd, yn 1947, yn ymdill yn y rai'r rai'r ysgolwydd yn 1983, ac mae'r ysgolwydd yn ymdill yn ymdill yma yn ystod o'r ysgolwydd. Mae'n gweld i'r ysgolwydd yw'r ysgolwydd yw'r ysgolwydd yn 1978, oherwydd yna'n gwneud yng Nghymru yn 40 ysgolwydd. Felly mae'n cyfle o'n cyfrifiadau, ac mae'n cyfrifiadau, sgwr i'r cyfrifiadau. Felly mae'n gwneud i'r ysgolwydd yw'r ysgolwydd, ond mae'n gwneud i'r cyfrifiadau. So far, this series has been very generously sponsored by the Toshiba International Foundation. So in particular I thank them for their support. So today's theme is Japan, disability and the Paralympics. It's very timely as today actually marks 1,000 days to go until the Tokyo Paralympics kicks off in 2020. And I wish I could say I was clever enough to have organised that a year ago, but it's just the stars have aligned actually on that. So today's theme marks the second event we're holding in a series of what I hope will become three or possibly four events on the theme of sports. We had one back in May, this is our second. And it's focused around of course Japan building up to hosting two mega sporting events, the Rugby World Cup in 2019 and of course the Olympics and Paralympics in summer 2020. So on that note I'd like to particularly thank the Japan Sports Council and the Japan Foundation because they're collaborating on this theme with me and their fantastic supporters of those events. So I'm delighted to welcome our speaker and participants here on stage. Our guest speaker is Professor Dennis Frost from Kalamazoo College in the USA. I love saying Kalamazoo, I could say that many times. He's published widely on the history of sport in Japan and this year he received a full bright fellowship to do research on the Paralympic movement in Japan. So of course he's presenting that very recent research here this evening for us. Our panellists are Kawai-san, Kawai Junichi. He's joined us from the Japan Sports Council in Tokyo and I want to thank the Japan Sports Council for very generously flying him over here just for this event. So thank you for coming such a long way for this event. So Kawai-san competed in six Paralympic games. He won five gold, nine silver and seven bronze medals in swimming. There could be a lot of clapping because there's more medals coming out. He's also the chairman, founder and chairman of the Paralympians Association of Japan. Next I welcome Tim Hollingsworth. He's the chief executive CEO of the British Paralympic Association. He served as secretary general for Paralympics GB at Rio, Sochi and London as well. He's boarder director of the Youth Sport Trust, the National Paralympic Heritage Trust and a member of the IPC's Paralympic Games Standing Committee. So welcome Tim. Last but not least I welcome Noel Thatcher. Noel has competed in six Paralympic games. He's won five gold, two silver and three bronze medals in distance running. So Noel has trained and raced extensively in Japan and I'm also delighted to say he's affiliated with SOAS because he studied here for his Japanese Proficiency Level Test 1 and I think he might be the only visually impaired person to have successfully got jailed PT once. So I'm sure you'll agree it's a great line up to discuss this theme of sports and Japan in Paralympic sport. So the running order will be Dennis will give his key lecture. That's around 40 to 45 minutes and then each of our panellists will take around five minutes each to introduce themselves to talk about their experience and involvement with Paralympic sport and of course they're free if they want to. It's not obligatory to ask or comment on Dennis's presentation as well. And then we'll open it up to you, the audience, I'll chair a Q&A.  And continuing our brilliant combination that we started in May of sake and sport, there'll also be sake tasting up there and for that I'm very grateful to the Japan Foundation and sake samurai for hosting that part of the event. So that's enough of me, I'm going to hand over to Dennis. How much for the introduction and for inviting me here tonight this is a great honor to be participating in this panel tonight. I don't have any medals so I feel like I'm the least qualified here to speak about it in some ways. So and thank you all for coming out, I know it's a cold night so I appreciate all of you being here this evening. As I'm sure most of you today know, in 2020 Tokyo will become the first city ever to host the international Paralympic Games on two occasions. As the city prepares to do so, a number of organizers, athletes and politicians have expressed their hopes and expectations that 2020 Paralympics will be inspirational, raise awareness and ultimately improve the lives of those with disabilities in Japan. Although I share such hopes, my examinations of the history of Japan's engagement with the Paralympic movement have left me convinced that we need to move beyond widespread assumptions that hosting such events automatically equates to improvements for individuals with disabilities. Today I'll offer a brief overview of Japan's engagement with the Paralympic Games, focusing in particular on three aspects. I'll explore the evolution of organizational approaches to the Paralympic Games held in Japan. I'll also examine changes and continuities in how athletes have been represented, especially among Paralympic organizers and promoters. I'll end with some points about trends in Japanese media coverage of both athletes and those that are promoting the Games, and I'll consider some possible implications of recent developments. Since Japan's engagement with the Paralympic movement is a relatively recent phenomenon, I'll begin with a brief examination of the origins of the 1964 Paralympic Games. Some of the recent materials produced for the 1964 Olympics and Paralympics give the impression that the Paralympic Games were part and parcel of Japan's approach to hosting the 1964 Tokyo Olympics from the very beginning. Yet this was certainly not the case. It would be far more accurate to describe the first Tokyo Paralympics as an afterthought. Given their current prominence, it can be easy to forget that in the 1960s the Paralympics were smaller, less recognized, and far less global than the Games we know today. The very first Games, the first Paralympics held outside of England, where they originated, as I'm sure most of you here know, were held in Rome only in 1960, and that means that Tokyo was only the second city outside of England to hold them. In the early years, cities hosting the Olympics were not required or even expected to host these new Paralympics, and this continued to be the case well after the Tokyo Games. In fact, after Tokyo in 1964, an Olympic host city did not hold the Paralympics again until Seoul did so in 1988. With those background facts in mind, it's all the more remarkable that people in Japan decided to pursue the Paralympics in the early 1960s at all. And it's critical to understand that organizers made this decision with almost no pre-existing institutions in place to plan or host these Games. At the time, very few people in Japan knew about these events, and no Japanese athletes had ever participated in the prior Games. The first Tokyo Paralympics in 1964 were made possible by a whirlwind of last-minute planning, fundraising, and largely volunteer-based organizational efforts. The organizers were starting with almost nothing and had less than three years to make the Games happen. And they succeeded, which is an amazing accomplishment in and of itself. Japan's first experience hosting the Paralympics in 1964 resulted in a number of important consequences. I'd like to highlight three outcomes in particular. First, a point that seems obvious and retrospect, but merits acknowledgement. Since this was Japan's first significant engagement with the Paralympic movement, the 1964 Games and the coverage related to them played a critical role in introducing the Paralympics and disability sports to the Japanese population. Organizers developed an aggressive marketing plan that allowed them to explain what the Games were and why they were important. In the process, they established a number of patterns of representation, which brings me to my second outcome. The representations of the 1964 Paralympics focused overwhelmingly on the idea of sports as rehabilitation for those with disabilities. This emphasis on rehabilitation stemmed from a variety of factors. For one, the early Paralympic movement as a whole was rooted in the idea of sports as rehabilitation. In addition, many of the key organizers in Japan were themselves medical professionals or individuals associated with organizations specifically dedicated to rehabilitation. Japanese organizers were also facing a sceptical medical and policy establishment, so in order to sell the Games, they emphasized sports potential as a tool for rehabilitation. Ultimately, the focus on rehabilitation fostered a medicalized view of Paralympic athletes and Japanese athletes in particular as patients. The viability of this representation was bolstered by the fact that most of Japan's Paralympians in 1964 were in fact coming from hospitals or rehabilitation centers. Because Japan lacked an established program to promote disability sports at the time, most of the Japanese athletes had only taken up sports in the year or even months just prior to the Games. One Japanese athlete who competed in the 1964 Games recently told me that he had only been in an actual swimming pool one or two times before entering the swimming competitions at the Paralympics. It was a different era. Most of his previous practice had been carried out at the large bath used for rehabilitation at his hospital. It's important to realize then that many of the representations we see of athletes in connection with 1964 stem from the underdeveloped status of disability sports in Japan at the time, as well as general international and Japanese approaches to promoting these sports. Disability advocates and Paralympic athletes sought to take advantage of the prominence of the Tokyo Paralympics to articulate alternate understandings of disability to a large audience. At the core of these efforts, especially among organizers, was a form of co-constitution, a negative nationalism of sorts that praised the brightness of foreign Paralympians while at times demeaning Japanese athletes. The purpose of such co-constitution was to highlight the flaws in Japanese approaches to disability in order to spark changes. Even though organizers' efforts ultimately helped foster important developments in the realm of disability sports in Japan, the medicalized and often negative imagery they relied upon to promote such changes in the 1960s should alert us to the danger of assuming that the outcomes from the Tokyo Paralympics were necessarily all positive. They also explained how some of the more problematic representations we continued to see in disability sports coverage originally took shape. That's not to say, of course, that they were not positive outcomes. Indeed, the third and final consequence of the 1964 Paralympics that I want to highlight is the pivotal role these games played in the establishment of formal organizations that were devoted to the promotion and development of sports for those with disabilities in Japan. What eventually became the Japanese Parasports Association has arguably been the single most important organization for promoting the Paralympic movement in Japan since the 1960s. This association had its roots in the Tokyo Paralympic organizational efforts. The first Tokyo Paralympics also sparked the creation of annual national sports meets for athletes with disabilities. As important as these outcomes were, it's also worth noting what we do not see in connection with the 1964 Paralympics. Here I would point in particular to the lack of changes in Tokyo's built environment that would have improved the accessibility of the city for those with disabilities. Most modifications connected to the games were limited to temporary fixes in particular areas. You can see an example of the ramp right there. There was simply not enough time or money in the planning stages for the games to have any sort of broader impact in terms of improving accessibility in Tokyo. Despite the creation of key organizations and national events, it's also difficult to gauge how the games affected broader social understandings of disability in the long term. Even though they employed a highly medicalized and at times negative approach, the Tokyo games did demonstrate to a wide audience that people with disabilities were more than patients who had to spend the rest of their lives stuck in hospitals or inside their homes. They could be athletes, living, working, and playing on their own. The ongoing promotion of disability sports after 1964 also points to some ways in which the Paralympics helped foster new methods aimed at supporting those with disabilities in Japanese society. With that in mind, it seems clear that the Tokyo Paralympics raised awareness, at least temporarily. But the lasting impacts on perceptions, especially beyond the realm of sports, are less clear. In the end then, the 1964 games were foundational. But it was the 1998 winter Paralympics in Nagano that served as the groundbreaking moment that began the so-called normalization of the Paralympics in Japan. The reasons behind Nagano's impact can be found in several key differences with the earlier games in Tokyo. First, the Nagano games were clearly building on the organizational legacies that had begun in the 1960s. In particular, Japan's involvement with disability sports, while not yet part of mainstream awareness, had become much more common. Japanese athletes were regularly engaging in a wide range of disability sports at home and abroad, and just as importantly, were increasingly competitive at the international level. In several respects, Japan was now a leading country in the realm of disability sports. Japan's leadership can be seen with two often overlooked international events that I'm also studying. The Far East and South Pacific, or FISBIC games, and the Oita International Wheelchair Marathon. The FISBIC games were largely developed in and first hosted by Japan's Oita Prefecture in 1975. Over the next three decades, these games served as the driving force of the Paralympic movement in much of the Asian and South Pacific region. From the beginning, these games challenged and sparked important changes in the larger Paralympic movement. For one, FISBIC explicitly aimed to ensure increased access to disability sports for those living in the less economically developed countries in the region. Organisers did so by providing a remarkable degree of financial, organisational and logistical support for would-be athletes. The FISBIC games also sought to expand on the existing Paralympic approach by incorporating athletes with a wider variety of physical disabilities. Indeed, it's clear that FISBIC pioneered the integrated multi-disability format for international events that we now associate with the Paralympics as a whole. Throughout their more than 30-year history, FISBIC's organisational efforts continued to be based in Oita. In total, the FISBIC games were held nine times in eight countries, with Japan hosting them for a second time in Kobe in 1989. These games were eventually replaced by the ongoing Asia Paragames in 2010. Like FISBIC, the international wheelchair marathon was also rooted in Oita. It was launched in 1981 to celebrate the United Nations International Year of Disabled Persons. As a wheelchair-only, distance road race, Oita's marathon was the first event of its kind in the world, and Oita has continued hosting this event each fall. This is the first year that it was actually cancelled because of a typhoon. As the establishment of FISBIC and the marathon suggests then, the sheer range of Japanese involvement with disability sports by the 1990s meant that Japanese organisers and athletes involved in the Nagano Paralympics had significant advantages over their counterparts in the earlier Tokyo games. Another key difference between Tokyo and Nagano can be found in the length of the planning phase. Quite simply, organisers in Nagano had much longer to prepare. Unlike Tokyo, where the Paralympics were largely an afterthought, organisers began pursuing and planning for the Nagano Paralympics in 1990, around the same time that Nagano was named as a finalist in the Olympic host city competition. Compared to Tokyo, this extra time in the planning phase gave the organisers greater opportunities to develop and promote their approach to the games. Organisers in Nagano also seemed to have been more conscientious than the earlier Tokyo counterparts about the need to modify the area's built environment to make it more accessible. This difference reflected broader shifts in Japanese society as well as the longer planning timeframe. A local story from the Shinano-Mainichi newspaper in 1995, for instance, reported that village officials had used wheelchairs to experience the lack of accessibility for themselves. Nevertheless, the experiences of Nagano exemplify a broader pattern, where the awareness of such accessibility issues does not always translate to greater accessibility. Aside from time, one of the biggest obstacles to making significant infrastructural change is funding. Olympic-related projects tend to consume much of the available funds, leaving the Paralympics with less to work with from the very beginning. In terms of approaches to athletes, perhaps the most notable change from Tokyo to Nagano was the increased emphasis on elite-level competition in connection with the 1998 games. This shift reflected broader changes in the international Olympic and Paralympic movements, which were both trending towards increased professionalization. For the Nagano Paralympics, this move, especially as exemplified in formal promotional efforts, represented a significant break from the earlier focus on sports as a form of rehabilitation. It's critical to note, however, that the older connection between disability sports and rehabilitation did not disappear. In fact, what we see in Nagano is a clash of competing discourses about the purpose of the Paralympic sports more broadly. At the heart of this clash were the athletes themselves, who seemed to have felt compelled to make the case that they were elite athletes seeking to win, not patients looking to recover. A number of athletes' comments and the official guide to Japanese athletes at the Nagano Paralympics alluded to their hopes that their events at the Paralympics would be treated as sports. At one point during the games, the guide from the Yome Uri newspaper also alerted readers that some of the foreign Paralympians were proudly declaring their status as professional athletes. By the end of the Nagano games, the idea that Paralympic athletes were elite competitors was clearly gaining ground, thanks in no small part to extensive media coverage of events and a number of Japanese victories. At the same time, the implicit questions about the ultimate purpose of the Paralympics remained largely unaddressed. In this sense in others, the Nagano games reveal continuities and differences within 1964 games and highlight some of the ongoing dilemmas in the Paralympic movement more broadly. Turning to the ongoing organizational efforts to host the 2020 games, a thousand days away now, we see a number of the important changes that are likely to have an impact on these Paralympics and their participants. Yet we also see the persistence of earlier patterns and challenges. Some of the biggest developments for Tokyo 2020 have to do with structural changes at the international and national level. As some of you may know, in the early 2000s, the International Olympic Committee, the IOC, and the International Paralympic Committee, the IPC, reached a series of agreements that integrated both sets of games more fully. As part of the current bidding process for the Olympics, potential host cities now must include their plans for the Paralympics and address how their city will meet the needs of individuals with disabilities. Another structural change is connected to the Japanese government, and the idea of sports has long been divided between two different ministries. In recent years, Japan has witnessed a combination of legal changes related to both sports and disability. Coupled with increased governmental funding for disability sports and efforts to integrate able-bodied and disability sports under a single government ministry, these legal changes have already dramatically reshaped the environment for disability sports in Japan. Ideally, they should allow for improved support and more unified approaches to the promotion and development of sports for all individuals in Japan. As a direct consequence of these and other structural developments, one of the most significant changes for 2020 was the extent to which Tokyo integrated the Paralympics into the formal bid for the games. The 2020 bid materials included a distinct section, outlining plans for the Paralympics. This section emphasized in particular how the city aims to become more accessible for the games. Tokyo has followed this up with highly publicized and widely praised accessibility guidelines for 2020, which complement those required by the IPC. Indeed, the IPC has cited Tokyo's guidelines, along with the National Universal Design Action Plan for 2020, as quintessential examples of how the Paralympics can have a positive effect on host countries. I, for one, am a bit sceptical of such claims. I tend to think that the professed desire for greater accessibility in Tokyo will also do with longstanding concerns about Japan's rapidly aging population than it does with the Paralympics, per se. Given recent controversies over funding and pressure from the IOC to reduce overall costs, it also remains to be seen whether funding is going to be available to achieve accessibility goals. In fact, recent reports indicate that a number of venues are currently falling short of goals for accessible seating, and that there is actually ongoing resistance to addressing those shortfalls. All that said, the explicit and intentional focus on changing the larger built environment that we are seeing, even in the earliest phases for Tokyo, is in fact something new in connection with these 2020 games. There are also indications that Japan's embrace of the Paralympics has exceeded those mandated by the IOC and IPC. As one telling example, the first speaker at the 2013 final Olympic host city bid presentation was a Paralympian named Sato Mami. Sato's presentation focused on how sports helped her overcome the loss of her leg to cancer, and how sports later served as an inspiration when her hometown was struck by the 2011 tsunami disaster. Sato's central role in the bid process differs dramatically from the earlier experiences of athletes in 1964 and even 1998. In the earlier Tokyo games, very few athletes were involved in the formal organization or planning processes. And even in Nagano, the Japanese Olympic Committee initially resisted requests to allow Japanese Paralympians to wear the same uniform as the Olympic team. Yet I also think that Sato's role and the apparent national embrace of the Paralympics in Japan raises interesting questions. It's not difficult, for example, to interpret Sato's account of overcoming through sports as a national allegory of sorts. After all, using sports to overcome adversity was at the heart of the larger message that Tokyo was trying to convey with its post-2011 disaster bid for the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. But is the goal of the Paralympics really about national prestige or national recovery? The increasing attention to things like mental counts of the Paralympics suggests that the professionalization and normalization of the Paralympics is resulting in no small part from links to nationalism. But at what cost? Does funneling support and funding to build elite sport for the sake of national prestige really have an impact on the lives of those with disabilities beyond some abstract sense of inspiration? Unfortunately, these are not easy questions to answer. But I think they're necessary to ask as Japan looks to 2020 and beyond. To this point, I've spoken largely about organizational issues and official representations of athletes in relation to the Games. So I'm going to shift now and share some observations on four trends in Japanese media coverage of the Paralympics from the 1960s to the present. The first of the four trends I want to highlight today is the fact that coverage of the Paralympic Games in Japan has been more extensive than most people might originally anticipate. This was certainly true for me when I began the research, which is why it's taking longer than I wanted. Even for the earlier 1964 Games, the major urban dailies, sports newspapers, a mix of regional papers, and NHK public television network all included some degree of coverage for the event. The Nagano Games generated even more publicity, and if the preliminary reporting we are currently seeing is any indication, Tokyo 2020 will be the best documented Paralympics to date. Such coverage has been no accident. Paralympic supporters have actively pursued and cultivated media interest from the earliest years of Japan's involvement with the movement. Well aware of the benefits of media coverage, organisers for Japan's first Paralympics established a large publicity committee in early 1963. Committee members provided Paralympic-related materials to hundreds of media outlets, organizations, companies, and cultural groups all over Japan. During the 1964 Games themselves, the media was given more or less complete access to all areas or events, as long as it did not interfere with competition. Later disability sports events held in Japan also actively sought out media attention. In many cases, media outlets have established official sponsorship roles, helping to ensure increased coverage in both print and broadcast forms. This chart published in 2016 by Fujita Motoki, one of Japan's leading scholars on disability sports, offers a general sense of the amount of newspaper coverage that disability sports have received since Japan's introduction to the Paralympics in 1960. One of the grass most notable aspects is the striking jump in coverage since 2013, when Tokyo was named as host for the 2020 Games. The total number of articles in Japan's three national dailies nearly doubled between 2013 and 2014. That's the tail end of the graph. It's off of the charts, literally. It's also readily apparent here why the Nagano Paralympics are characterized as a moment of transition for Japan's media coverage of the Paralympics. The number of articles for 1998 jumped to an unprecedented 630. You can see that's the big jump there towards the end. In the year since, coverage has remained well above pre-Nagano levels. I recently interviewed a reporter for the Mainichi newspaper who described similar patterns of coverage during his more than 20 years of reporting on disability sports in Japan. He noted minimal interest for a number of years, followed by a significant increase in media attention during the 1998 Games, and a truly dramatic jump in coverage in just the last few years. As important as these dramatic shifts in recent years are, we cannot let them skewer two other points. First, the less abundant, though still significant, earlier coverage. And second, the lack of sustained media interest in disability sports after events conclude. Prior to 1960, coverage of disability sports was virtually non-existent in Japan, and it seems that the jump to 128 articles in 1964 represents a many-fold increase, arguably even more conspicuous than more recent changes. Yet over the next several decades, following the 1964 Games, coverage dropped drastically, with several years registering zero articles in any of the major dailies. This drop is despite the fact that Japan has hosted national disability sports events every year since 1965. Then Japanese athletes were regularly engaged in international competition from 1962 onward, including two Fisbit Games hosted by Japan. There should be more here. It wasn't until 1996, a summer Paralympic year leading up to Nagano, that the number of articles again exceeded 100. To a lesser extent, we also see some similar bubbles of coverage in connection with other disability sports events. The various peaks on this graph after Nagano correspond to Paralympic years. Summer Games attract more attention than Winter Games, and off-years see a significant drop. Perhaps it goes without saying, but what these bubbles suggest is that disability sports media coverage has been and continues to be event dependent. Bigger and more prestigious events attract more attention. As the event ends, so too does that attention, a trend which casts significant doubt on assumptions about the awareness raising potential of disability sporting events. In terms of broadcast media, Sport Historian Sakita Yoshihiro has recently published a study of NHK's television coverage of the 1964 Paralympics. He's documented 42 distinct news stories and 19 other programs aired between July 1962 and November 1964. These broadcasts included live coverage of the opening ceremony, as well as one live broadcasts of the Japanese team's wheelchair basketball games. This makes it clear that the Paralympics in Japan were certainly not ignored even in their earliest years. Given the state of broadcasting at the time, and especially NHK's dominant market share, it's arguable that this limited coverage in the 1960s might even be superior to the coverage we find available today. People simply have more options today and are unlikely to watch something just because it's available. In fact, a recent survey by NHK indicated that less than 30% watched coverage of the Rio Paralympics more than once during the games. This lack of attention is despite the fact that other surveys of Japanese television coverage have revealed that the 2016 Rio Paralympics received nearly three times as much airtime as the 2012 games. Even if people are not watching it, it does seem clear that broadcast media in Japan, like the print coverage, has begun to gain significant attention as the new Paralympics approach. In light of such developments, the prospects for Tokyo's 2020 games look promising in terms of media. At the same time, it appears that, like much else associated with the Paralympics at present, media coverage is experiencing one of its periodic bubbles. The question of how coverage of disability sports can be sustained after the games is among the many issues included in what has been dubbed the 2021 problem for disability sports in Japan. I also think that it's critical that we not allow the dramatic increases in coverage, important though they may be, to overshadow other issues. Numbers are only part of the story. The nature of the coverage also needs to be taken into account. Thinking about the types of Paralympic coverage we see brings me to a second broad trend, the role of local media outlets. Until recently, stories in the national media in Japan have tended to focus on more spectacular elements, such as torch relays, ceremonies and winners. This type of coverage was supplemented by shorter feature stories on key athletes and key figures associated with the Paralympic movement. In 1998, feature stories on athletes, both Japanese and foreign, became much more numerous. We're already seeing athletes talking about 2020, which suggests that coverage of individual participants will receive a significant portion of media attention in games. These developments have been linked to increased promotion and awareness of disability sports in Japan, and an additional factor would be the improving chances for Japanese victories, since several of Japan's athletes are among the world's best in their particular sports. All that said, the most detailed and nuanced stories about Paralympic athletes and about disability sports themselves have long been found not in national media coverage, but in local media outlets. Perhaps because such coverage is inherently limited in its reach, it has been largely overlooked in the recent scholarly literature. My own research suggests that giving attention to local coverage serves to highlight important differences and even problems with national media. By way of example, I'd like to look a bit more closely at media coverage of the Oita International Wheelchair Manathon. As you'll recall from my earlier reference, this race was established in 1981 in Oita, and for those of you who don't know Oita, it's a prefecture on the island of Kyushu that's located about 1,000 km from Tokyo. Today, Oita's wheelchair marathon remains one of the largest, most prominent international sporting events of its kind. Until 2016, Oita's race was also the only wheelchair marathon in Japan officially sanctioned by the IPC. In contrast to one-time events such as the Paralympics and Feaspic, Oita's marathon has been held every year at the same venue for nearly four decades. That makes it a unique vantage point for examining trends in media coverage. This graph depicts a yearly breakdown of the 561 total articles related to Oita's wheelchair marathon from all available editions of Japan's three major dailies, the Asahi, Mainichi, and Yomiori newspapers. I'll talk in a minute specifically about the local coverage in relation to the marathon, but to begin, what we see here is something that already looks different from the earlier graphs. Well, there's a steady increase in coverage, especially around 1998. Most of the peaks and valleys we saw elsewhere don't line up for the marathon. Most notably, unlike the dramatic upward trend we saw in connection with Tokyo's 2020 bid, we see a move in the opposite direction for marathon coverage. In other words, the increases in media attention we are seeing as a result of Tokyo's upcoming games are not necessarily having an equal effect on the large of disability sports more generally. This line on the bottom is actually blue on mine, but it's hard to see the color there. That line is actually the articles that are found only in the local Oita editions of the three major newspapers. Just to be clear, what you're seeing there is articles that only someone reading the newspaper in Oita would have access to. It's immediately apparent that in most years these articles make up the majority of articles on the race. I want to highlight the fact that neither of these lines depicts articles that are published in the Oita Godo newspaper. Oita Godo is a local Oita-based newspaper company that has been an official sponsor for the marathon since the beginning. In an average year, Oita Godo provides 15 to 20 stories on the marathon. Content on the marathon has been featured on the front page of Oita Godo since the beginning, and full page ads and notes from other sponsors have also been several instances where the coverage was even more extensive. The Oita Godo newspaper marked the 30th anniversary of the race in 2010 by adding a 30-part series of feature stories to its normal coverage. If I were to include those numbers here from Oita Godo, we'd have a dramatically different looking graph. In fact, it would highlight even more the prominence of local coverage. What we see here in the bottom there, in contrast, is what we see with the Tokyo editions of the major newspapers. Tokyo editions, of course, Tokyo is the single largest medium market in Japan, and what's in the Tokyo papers tends to be what you see at the national level. What we see is significantly less coverage than the local Oita editions, and a number of recent years with no coverage of the marathon at all in any of the three major papers. This means that the coverage at the national level has actually decreased from the races earlier years. That change reflects, in part, the state of wheelchair marathons, which are far more common today than they were when Oita launched its event. It may be harder to document, but I also think that what we're seeing has to do with location and perceptions of prestige, especially since Tokyo and marathon now includes an elite wheelchair marathon racing division of its own, which actually was granted IPC sanction. Numbers aside, there are several other noteworthy differences between the local coverage of the marathon provided by the national or regional editions. Overwhelmingly, non-local stories, by which I'm referring to the national editions of the newspaper, have tended to focus on documenting the winners in extremely brief articles. I would add here that this type of abbreviated reporting is not unique to marathon coverage. Another leading Japanese scholar of disability sports, Watari Tadashi, has recently begun comparing character counts for articles on disability sports in the major dailies. His preliminary results seem to suggest that the dramatically increasing number of articles I mentioned earlier are deceptive, since the actual amount of content being featured is changing far less. What we're seeing, in other words, is that the dramatic jump in the number of articles is being driven by basic, brief accounts of sporting results with little explanation or contextualization. My analysis of the coverage for the Oita marathon suggests that this is not in itself a new development, especially for the national coverage, and that it has significant implications in how such events and their athletes have been represented. For many years, national or regional articles on Oita's marathon named only the top finisher, usually a foreign male, and the top Japanese finisher, who was also a male. They gave minimal attention to the women who participated in the race since it began in 1981. Eventually, the top female athletes were given attention as well, especially in years where Japanese women dominated the race. Yet, even in more recent years, the national and regional coverage has only acknowledged the results for the group of athletes competing under classifications with the lowest level of physical impairments. Today, I'm not going to offer a detailed breakdown of how classification works for Oita's marathon, because my point here is that anyone reading these brief national or regional articles would not necessarily realize that Oita's marathon is one of the few competitive races worldwide that has remained open to marathoners with higher levels of impairment. In contrast, local articles on the race can be two to three times as long as those in the national editions and have tended to offer far more detailed breakdowns of results. They give attention to the top finishers in all categories, as well as lists of non-elite local athletes who competed in the race. Well, I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that the national and regional press are deliberately hiding the presence of these other racers. The coverage they are providing serves to reinforce disabled perceptions that the truly elite athletes worthy of attention are those who are more able. In addition to differences in reporting on results, local coverage has proven far more effective at giving voice to athletes. In part, this stems from more detailed coverage of the event itself, with frequent use of quotations to highlight athletes' expectations or observations about their performances. Even more important, however, have been the numerous feature stories, articles which focus on both elite competitors and those like 90-year-old Kudo Kanejiro, who has participated in all but one of Oita's 36 races to date and never won any sort of prize. Such local coverage in Oita offers diverse representations of athletes with disabilities, demonstrating that people are pursuing sports for an equally diverse set of reasons. In other words, this local coverage makes it clear that not everyone participating in the marathon is in it to win it. In a recent essay published in December 2016, media researcher Yamada Kyoshi suggested that one of the ways to improve overall participation in disability sports in Japan is to use television coverage to craft media sports hero narratives for athletes with disabilities. In his view, this will create a new set of stars who will presumably inspire others to develop an interest in and begin practicing disability sports. A variety of anecdotal evidence suggests that exposure to Oita's marathon has been instrumental in bringing more people into the sport, but it's critical to emphasize that Oita has proven successful in part by emphasizing both the elite side and the accessible side of its event. Well, I'm certainly not against giving elite athletes with disability their due, and there's no shortage of very impressive athletes in Japan to draw from. I think that some of the recent studies about the negative impacts on perceptions of disability associated with the Sydney and the London Games should give us pause about the sort of emphasis on elite level athletes that does seem to be driving much of the coverage we're seeing in Japan right now. Not all of those with disabilities can or want to pursue sports. And among those who do, only a select few will ever perform at a Paralympic level. The overwhelming representation of disability in the media is that of the elite Paralympic hero. This image will have little resonance with the vast majority of those living with a disability, even at the inspirational level. Some of the evidence we're seeing from previous games also suggests that this type of coverage might actually foster false societal expectations, that those living with disabilities must necessarily be aiming for Paralympic glory. By regularly sharing stories that do not focus solely on elite or those aiming to be elite, local coverage in places like Oita offer alternative views on the role that disability sports play in people's lives. The diversity of coverage in Oita is also a reminder that analysis of media has to take into account the diversity of Japan itself. Even if their geographic impact might be limited, there are a number of places like Oita where these types of alternative narratives have long been part of the local media scape. As dominant as Tokyo's voice tends to be in the mainstream media, it's not the only one speaking about disability sports. That said, I don't want to give the impression that local coverage is without flaws. In fact, for both the national and local coverage, a third trend that I want to discuss is the persistence of the rehabilitation-related focus from the earlier years of the games. As media coverage of the Paralympics and disability sports took shape in Japan in the 1960s, the narratives tended to echo those being used by organisers. This development is not altogether surprising given the combination of organisers' careful attention to promoting coverage that they wanted, as well as the general lack of attention to athletes early on. For instance, Sakita's study of NHK coverage for the 1964 games highlights the prominence of rehabilitation themes. His research revealed that organisers significantly outnumbered athletes in terms of representation in much of NHK's programming. In other words, there was a lot more people talking about the games who were not athletes in 1964. This pattern of viewing disability sports as a form of rehabilitation is also reflected in the fact that most newspaper coverage of events appeared on the society page rather than the sports page. As seemingly minor as this page distinction seems, the reporter from the Maenici that I spoke with pointed out that for a long period of time, those in charge of the sports pages were adamantly set in their view that disability sports were not sports. Fujitomoto Aki's analysis of media coverage of the Paralympics has clearly shown that it wasn't until the 2000 games in Sydney that a number of Paralympic-related articles on the sports page came to outnumber those published elsewhere. Even after that point, many of those articles on the sports page have provided little more than basic details on wins and losses. It's also not been unusual since 2000 to find coverage of disability sports events on the society page. Oita Marathon articles appeared on the society page as recently as last year. Even as the Paralympics have become increasingly elite at all levels and in all regions, many media outlets have continued to rely on patterns that link sports to some sort of recovery. Japanese coverage is hardly alone in this respect. As one of the most frequent criticisms of media coverage of disabled athletes is the reliance on medical stereotypes of disabled people as super-crips who have overcome their disability through sports. To be sure, such coverage focused on recovery through sports is often influenced by the stories that athletes tell about themselves. Sato Mami's personal account at the bid presentations offers a striking case in point. The prominence of these types of overcoming narratives raises important questions about the role of inspirational discourses that are often tied to disability sport in Japan and beyond. Since the Paralympics and other disability sports like Oita's Marathon cite inspiration as part of their explicit goals, we really need to ponder whether the inspirational qualities of these events are really all that different from those associated with able-bodied sports. Who exactly is supposed to be inspired and why? Do these inspirational discourses have a real, sustained impact? Do they simply make us feel good without really having to do anything to improve the lived experiences of those with disabilities? A number of scholars examining media coverage outside of Japan have suggested that, in fact, many of the representational practices employed in the media result in a form of what's been called inspiration porn, or the tendency for society to treat people with disabilities as objects for feel-good inspiration and little else. Here, too, Japan seems to exemplify the broader trends, as evidenced by heavy reliance on the language of overcoming, inspiration, and courageousness to characterize the performance of athletes with disabilities. There is evidence, however, that Japan's coverage is heading in a different direction. As media interest has increased and greater attention has been given to disability-related language in Japanese society, more reporters have become aware of the potential for their work to rely upon stereotypes or potentially problematic inspirational discourses. Research by Fujita and others showed that earlier coverage tended to fit other international media patterns, such as the framing of images to hide disabilities or the focusing on emotion instead of action. In contrast, studies of imagery used in connection with the recent real games in Japan point to fewer instances of these kinds of problematic representations. Whether or not these developments continue, Tokyo's Paralympics in 2020, like those more than 50 years ago, are certain to have a profound impact on how disability sport will be reported for the foreseeable future. It behooves us to give careful attention to ongoing representational practices in the media. One final media trend merits attention because it, too, will likely play a pivotal role in 2020 and beyond. Here, I'm thinking in particular of the reliance on new media outlets. At present, scholarship on the role of new media in sport is still relatively undeveloped. With a constantly growing body of source materials, new media represents a potentially rich field for ongoing research. I think this may be especially true in the case of disability sports, since several athletes and organizations including the IPC have embraced blogs, websites, live streaming, and Facebook to get their messages out and connect with new audiences. The turn to new media is both a reflection of broader social trends and a response to frustrations with mainstream media that have historically offered limited coverage of even major international events. One of the earliest examples of this development in Japan is the Challengers TV website, affiliated with the non-profit organization STANDT. Although it is now one of several similar sites available, Challengers TV was established in 2010 before Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Games. Its goal was to promote disability sports in Japan as sports rather than a form of rehabilitation. It also sought to provide a venue for highlighting disability sports events and athletes. The website regularly features new stories, interviews, photos, and videos, and it hosts a large collection of links to athletes' private blogs. On one hand, this is a huge development that frees athletes and supporters from relying on previously uncooperative mass media networks. It also gives them a degree of agency over what they say and how they say it. New media also provides would-be reporters with easy access to a wide variety of information on athletes, making it harder to claim ignorance as a reason for a lack of good quality coverage. Proponents of new media argue that the increased availability of content will lead to increased awareness and interest and will in turn eventually lead to improved coverage for traditional media. On the other hand, adopting for new media approaches places a not insignificant burden on the athletes themselves and seemingly shifts responsibility away from society and back to the individual. In a sense, a reliance on new media can take the pressure off mainstream media networks to step up and might even risk further marginalization. Without the larger media presence to generate broader initial awareness, only people who already know about disability sports will be actively seeking information or encountering material available via the various new media platforms. Whatever their ultimate impact, the growing prominence of new media or, for example, of the ways in which disability sports and its participants in Japan today are in a very different environment than was the case five decades ago. In terms of organizational and institutional growth, increased media coverage and promising developments in how athletes are represented, the Paralympics have made great strides in Japan as they have elsewhere. Yet they remain far from problem free with many questions and issues remaining to be addressed. As I noted at the beginning, in the second Paralympics, we need to be careful not to assume that progress will automatically result from simply holding this international sporting event. Critical examinations of these games, how they're organized, held and represented, will be key to assuring that they have more than a superficial impact. In closing then, I want to thank all of you for taking the time to come and think about these kinds of issues tonight. I'm looking forward to discussing them further with you this evening. Now, Kawaisan has a brief presentation which I'm going to bring up. So, this picture, Torchlie, a new digital and Paralympic game, I picked it up, my contract note. So, it's the start of Tokyo 2020 organized committees and so Sydney Olympic Games, Cyngornau Zsima, Ombian and Paralympia together, main concept, Tokyo 2020, Olympic and Paralympic integration. My job is so, I work him at the Japan Sports Council, senior researcher for Paralympic Games. So, and Tokyo 2020, a sweet commission by Steer. And so, at the Paralympic Committee, a sweet commission by Steer. And Tokyo, Japan's swimming federation. And so, Japan's swimming federation is present. So, Japan, a Japanese Paralympic Committee, a sweet committee, Steer. So, a lot of time.  Next, next, that's right. I am born at, so, 1975. I'm now 42 years old. So, I'm starting at Sydney 5 years old. I'm a super low bishop. But so, 50 years old, I lost of life. So, I was born to born in Shizuoka prefecture. Do you know? Shizuoka is so, between Tokyo to Osaka, Japan's highest mountain, Mount Fuji, is in Shizuoka prefecture. Very famous. So, I, my high school is in Tokyo, national school for blind. So, three years special education. And so, graduate national school for blind, I studied was a university. I was special in education philosophy. So, I, my dream is, Japanese junior high school teacher of social studies. So, I, this, 8 years teaching, I was teacher. But now it's so, so, next, next. So, my swimming result, I was part of the game, six times from Barcelona in 1982. And so, London in 2006. I was 21 metres, includes five goals, and I think about second goals. Last year, last year, so, I did see part of the game, so, finally, my swimming movie, short movie, please watch that movie. Thank you. Oh, sorry. Hang on. So, that's an introduction from Kawai-san. Now I invite Tim to say a few words. Quickly say, thank you very much indeed, for that fascinating lecture, comparing, I think, two entirely distinct eras for the panoramic sport and the panoramic movement. But of course, connected, as you said, through the unique circumstances of the first time for a city hosting against the second time. I think my reflections as we go on to hopefully talk about is, how can we compare what you're now looking at from a position of the Japanese panoramic movement and Tokyo Games to our own experience here in Redmond, and particularly with the London 2012 Games, and the way that that was perceived as a catalyst for activity, for change, for indeed panoramic movement worldwide to understand what was possible when it came to the hosting of the panoclasm. I think probably my three initial responses to your comments vary in my, our own position in this Great Britain with the founding nation as you pointed out, with the Games originating in Steglander in 1948, that heritage of the movement is a critical part of how we see the future and understanding within that the range of impairments and the requirement for the Games always to consider that this, you know, perception that as it moves into a more professional era there will be fewer classes and fewer opportunities for disabled athletes to compete. Secondly, what you rather memorably described as, I wrote it down, inspiration porn which I suddenly realised I'm in the business of. So that's quite interesting act for me because we are unquestively in the business of inspiration I feel demonstrating what's possible and I think one of the debates to be had is the almost substantial point about the measurement of the fact and the true nature of its impact and for me, London proved what was possible in terms of taking the attraction of sport and the sporting event and creating a platform for disability to be front and centre in a way that there are very few other manifestations in society and I think we have to be very careful therefore of asking too much of the inspiration versus the opportunity that it provides. I will bring a very British point to bear on this, that until last Saturday we had a British athlete on a television programme called Strictly Come Dancing which was watched by 10 million people every Saturday night and the impact of that for me is profound just in the basic level of the progression of people's perception of disability. I can't prove it but you can know it's there and I think we should be careful over reliance on inspiration being measurable versus being that intangible wonder that actually changes the debate and then lastly I will say in relation to Japan are my own experiences so far I've been four times now ahead of our preparation to 2020 it never stops and the reality is that I think it is going to be in many ways the games that you're hoping for the attitude, the organizing committee the way that Tokyo as a city is embracing its heritage and its future but I also see the challenges that you recognise. I think we have to be aware Malonia is in a very challenging city for general accessibility and I'm sure you've recognised that but also there is a debate starting now in Japan about what the inspiration of the games can and should be and I'm very taken with the phrase that is used in English and the Japanese language which is para-free and I'm trying very hard to help our friends and colleagues including in the Japanese and the general committee and many others to learn from what we did in London whether it's education programmes whether it's sponsorship and commercial programmes which again the inspiration has worked in a commercial context the way in which an organisation like Channel 4 has redefined some of its programming because of the para-free games programmes like The Last May which no longer focus on disability but just put mainstream performance with disability but I think para-free in Japan is focused very much on the physical and I think actually the only way in the para-free works is that's actually a social concept and my own sense of what we should be debating is I'm quite with you about the measurement and the practicalities of measuring inspiration but don't ask too much of it when it can be wonderful simply by the way it brings to the fore an area of society that otherwise is not discussed or given performance Thank you. Now I'll invite Noel to say a few words. Firstly, if you're in the business of promoting I must be in the business of starings if you're in the business of starings My perspective as an athlete it probably wasn't quite transcended in the 50 years but I'm getting on now I started my para-free career in 1988 my first experience of sport in Japan was in 1992 when I was in the Al-Humar Pacific Coast Marathon that Al-Humar was held in Miyazaki Prefecture is the world's first blind marathon cup event and on my duty black my way I'm tired of being able to pull out the races but it came to that anyway so I introduced the introduction to the event and at that time the event took place in December of the year of the summer pyramids which were in Barcelona where I was fortunate enough to win 200 metres I think at bronze in the 800 walked out of the arrivals lounge in Pitaro Terminal 2 along with a friend of mine who had won the same category of marathon Steve Brun to be met by nobody not a single representative of national or even local we jumped in a taxi back to my home in Essex but when we arrived in Japan the experience was entirely different we were stopped in the streets we were constantly interviewed Steve would come out we were going to win that race in Japan and we were from an athlete perspective it was a pivotal moment to be recognised in the streets for your sporting prize no one mentioned that we were taking part in an event but that was what triggered my initial desire to go to Japan and train subsequently identified in Japanese team o'r cydain cymiadau was a very good corpus running scene when the other women decided I wasn't fast enough to run with the men but also at the time that I was competing had 7 company runners who could run under 210 for a marathon which I don't think we this year would have won so and at no point did they ever were they anything other than welcoming and that's been the trend throughout my experiences taking part in Japanese sport so I chose to go back to Japan and subsequently took part in the human arts and other races associated with it 11 years running I also chose to train in Japan for Lanterborough two gold medals and it was a Japanese company that offered me sponsorship where the UK representatives of the global running brands turned me down so I could possibly give you any type of perspective on Japanese sport now and that's been through sponsorship and competitive side of things but also in terms of the societal acceptance of my personal athlete it's not really mentioned and that's something that's true of the coaches in this country as well so I see Japan as hugely optimistic for the Paris sport I think it's not a criticism of that but it's more of an observation that sadly Japan hasn't really marked it how amazing Paris sport in Japan is globally and I think that now we're starting to see the trend come through the media's coverage and you will find this incredibly emotional and passionate that comes to Paris sport which will open to the athletes from around the world so I mean having said all this I was once asked to go to school for the blind and I'm a product of a special school in the UK school for the visually impaired and blind my first practice in 1984 out of the team of 20 swimmers and athletes combined 10% of the same school so it was a great place to develop as a sportswear and I went to school in Miyazaki and met an 11 year old blind boy who'd never run never had the experience of having both feet off the ground at the same time and it was a real challenge to explain what Roman was to get my head around the idea that these opportunities were universal but I think the same situation where I come into contact with people with visually impaired and state participation who haven't been fortunate enough to meet people who can provide those opportunities so I think going forward just being closing if I'm happy I think Japan will have post an incredible game so I think the problems that face the gains in terms of being societal value the measurement of that are common to most countries Brazil would definitely be no exception in that sense I think as Tim said you can't quantify inspiration but you can feel it thank you very much Tim did you want to respond to that? Well I think very briefly because it's again about an important learning for us from London is that you must see we banned the use of the word legacy up to London because it suggested that we reached a high point for a pinnacle that we wanted to achieve and the opposite was true it was absolutely the capital to the start we hoped so we used the word momentum by the way positive but to the point that I was raised which is why I raised my hand I think you just hit on an absolutely interesting dilemma of actually trying to normalise disability in schools through the mainstream of disability actually creating a bit of a talent pool in terms of the specialism of the sport and people being given that opportunity and it's a small level but one of the impacts of the London 21st World Games was that a commercial partner realised people know they have quite a lot to do in schools generally or like to realised that there was an opportunity to support that and they now fund a programme of disability inclusion trading in schools for PE teachers to create meaningful PE in school sport for the disabled children in mainstream schools without crucially impacting negatively on the experience of the non-disabled majority and I think it's a small intervention it's by no means universal and it's by no means going to get that later in time soon but as an example of why the positive inspiration of the games can lead to consequences that extend beyond sport that's it triggered in my mind when he talked about the fact that now in mainstream schools it's hard for children actually to find the sport that it used to be when special schools actually allowed for it and made it available and I think if one of the ways we can redress the balance is by recognising that normalising society was absolutely right it's still going to be a provision made OK let's open it up to the audience Chris you had your hand up first who brings up a very important argument in the deaf culture of the deaf society in the United States over whether or not it was it was better to be hearing or hearing impaired and this is the battle within that society when it's going to be able to do this later to do that more in the century the question is to whether there is a hierarchy of ability being built within this competition is worth exploring especially especially as we look at how the press in Japan is dedicating less exposition less explanation and more superficiality at the national level that may be presenting a hierarchy of ability in other words we're not really disabled we're just like you we're immoral and what constitutes normalcy for most people who live in a disability is never going to be achieved to the level that our athletes here today have been able to achieve and my my concern is that what's being created here is an area that might not be inspirational for the disabled I don't know but I think this is something to be implied in the evidence presented at the topic Is that your hand up? No No, is that your hand up? It was my hand up I don't understand the point that you're making but I think I can only provide an athlete's participants perspective on this What I would seek to do outside of the immediate self-cratification of your country is to change the perception that a given in British commerce problem, disability couldn't be challenged, I think and that doesn't make some sort of sense so I'm not academic so I can't explain things obviously physically then forgive me and I think that is true of my studies at sides because it was acutely aware when I was studying at the University of EQ that trying to learn 1945 canty was going to be a bit of a challenge but ultimately not one that couldn't be overcome to demonstrate that process I think it's important that we do challenge perceptions and that does transcend harassment and I think track para sport and para athletes quite often are the vehicle to people who come to that own assumption and that's why I think that's important and I'll never I'm not comfortable with the idea of claiming that disability isn't an issue because it clearly is an issue they're para athletes after all but that's kind of the point but in denying it I think athleteity if you want to try and race wheelchair marathon in 1 hour 20 you can try you'll soon find out that there's an element of a lean level physical ability implicit to that achievement but I think it's equally important para athletes take on that responsibility for challenging perception and we could be talking about age gender race age and I think that's in Japan there will be benefits beyond the you know mental health for people the tsunami tragedy and subsequent regeneration from there that's an important narrative and sport is a great vehicle for social change anyway I think that's again what's wrong with that sorry question here momentum is this on now okay so I didn't interview people but I kept with keeping tabs on the media and there are people talking about these kinds of concerns and I think that part of what I think we are seeing and part of what's happening right here in this panel is that we have people talking about these kinds of concerns and I think that part of what I think we are seeing and part of what's happening right here in this panel is that we have represented the kind of different constituencies that are part of this discussion and each of those constituencies has a different set of goals and ideals and kind of purposes for what they do what they do you have athletes, we have the institutional organizational structure and then you know and then me as someone and an outsider coming in and kind of looking at this kind of trying to get a big picture and then I think there is also the disabled community the community of those with disabilities that have very little kind of interest in sports and what you see is something similar to what you see in other context when people are talking about this they say you know it's not that this doesn't relate to us but that this isn't our lives our lives are not about sports and that's partly why I was emphasizing that idea in the local coverage these people who are not elite and they don't want to be elite I mean is there anybody in here who is a marathon runner or a distance runner do you run to win like people run for all sorts of reasons right I mean and so they but they do in Oita like they have these people that are not winners right and so and part of that the reason they are making this because I think especially Oita Oita has a really fascinating history that I couldn't fit into 45 minutes and so part of what we're seeing in Oita is something really exceptional but it's that local level response that you got when you went to Japan like there's kind of something special happening at that area but that's a different kind of coverage than you see at this at the national level which is very kind of centered on kind of and my first book is on sports stars and sports star narratives and so like when I read about sports stars I'm like I see some of the same patterns being used to talk about athletes with disabilities that you see in kind of the previous kind of history of Japanese sports stardom and so that's not all that's surprising to me I think the inspirational aspect is something that you've been seeing in sports for a very long time and that's partly the other issue when inspiration porn is not my term so but it's a phrase that's been used but it is so inspiration is part of sports and I think that's partly what we're getting at too right and there's this quality like we all feel something when we watch like an athlete break a world record whether it's in Paris sports whether it's the Olympics you could go to a high school track meet and feel something and so that's a quality that's there in sport what I guess I'm concerned about that becomes the justification for why the Paralympics are doing what they're doing and that is that going to actually lead to change and I agree with you that you can't quantify inspiration and I guess part of what I see when you look at the kind of history of 64 in Tokyo and the history of the Facebook games the Facebook games essentially disappeared from collective memory in many senses and so if these were inspirational games so we're really inspirational, we're getting attention as they're happening and then they just disappear that concerns me I guess and it's not that I don't think they can be inspirational because they do but it's the question of again inspirational for whom and what is the purpose of that inspiration is it to create change, is it just to make us feel good I think this is kind of looping back to some of the points that came up on the panel but there are definitely people that are concerned about that the Paralympics are going to be beneficial and one of the concern is like how much of this is going to be Tokyo specific especially if you're talking about funding because there's a lot of money being spent on Tokyo and there's a lot of money that's not being spent in other places like Fukushima and Tohoku so those are concerns that are being discussed and this is kind of ongoing and that's one of the great things about the Paralympics in Japan right now and if I came across negatively I didn't mean to but because what's happening in Japan is amazing I'm coming at this from the perspective of the US where the Paralympics are virtually non-existent I mean I just got an email from USA Hockey they're sending emails out asking for funding as part of giving Tuesday so that they can buy new sleds for the USA National Parahockey team like that's ridiculous and so what Japan is doing is really amazing there's education happening in schools that you can't miss the Tokyo Paralympics right now if you're in Tokyo it's a little easier if you go other places in Japan Osaka they're not paying so much attention to Tokyo Paralympics but that's Osaka so I mean there's a lot of really interesting stuff happening there is a lot of excitement but there's also a lot of people that are discussing this 2021 problem and what this is going to mean beyond the legacy but like what is this going to mean for Parasport what is this going to mean for people with disabilities what is this going to mean for accessibility what is this going to mean for very free society those are discussions and I think that they're really important discussions that are happening in Japan I think Kawai-san wanted to say something was that? sorry in Japanese there are two points about inspiration porn he's mentioned inspiration porn he's mentioned inspiration porn just so that everybody first one is that the athletes that are playing on the field can't go to other Paralympics or there are people that are not allowed to go to Paralympics and there are people that are conscious of the impact of commenting first of all he's talking about how inspiration spreads and from athletes perspective it's quite important that for athletes who's possibly inspiring someone to be aware that there are people with disability that cannot qualify for Olympic Games there's no such sports that they can participate that for them to be aware of that when they are sending messages he thinks that's quite important when they are trying to inspire someone or when they happen to inspire someone and the other part is how media is going to pick up on that and how they are going to spread and so for Japanese organizing committee is going to be to be aware that those two parts that they need to systematically approach how they are going to process these two different parts to send the messages so for Tokyo or Japan to educate the Paralympic athletes is going to be important that they are going to be sending messages to athletes or I'm sorry people with disability that might not be going to be taking place in Paralympics and at the same time to answer the question regarding the general public who might not be interested in Paralympics or disability sports that in general public in Japan 99% of the population answer that they know the word or the vocabulary Paralympic Games but it's almost 1% knows what kind of disability these Paralympic athletes have or what kind of classification that they are divided into so these are the general understanding and perspective that Japanese have towards Paralympic Games so for the Paralympic Games in Japan that it's going to be very important to bring the Japanese culture to the world so the Paralympic Games is going to be very important to bring the Japanese culture to the world and to the world being the Japanese general public to come into the stadium to watch the game in live. At the same time, there will be a lot of free events or international events for disability sports that are going to be happening in Tokyo, so that is going to be also an opportunity to open up the general public to actually watch sports in live. He also mentioned it is going to be important to educate the athletes to be y brol model. I'm sorry. It's going to be important to educate the athletes, but at the same time that Tokyo has London Games as the role model to follow up to. So it's going to be, for the post 2021, that we want to educate the athletes to be able to spread the words and how we did the Paralympics games to the international platform even after the game. So Kawaisan has 1,000 days to do all of that, I think. Yes, and so 100 days before the Paralympics games. Yes. I don't need reminding of that. Can I just say very quickly, that's the point. The real measure will be 1,000 days after Tokyo 2020 and people's awareness and understanding, not now. The figures were awful before London 2012 and the debate and the language has changed completely in the United Kingdom. Two other very quick points really to relate to some of the really fascinating debates around inspiration and the definition of disability. We're unashamedly, I think we have to recognise against the example of the Oita marathon, that the Paralympic Games is the pinnacle event for Parasport. It is unashamedly elite. You have to qualify in a quite sizeable way to get there. So there isn't a comparator where you would say well they're not covering the ordinary competitor because there isn't one. And that's a good thing because it creates a sense of achievement around disability that is very powerful. However, I'm thoroughly with you and we had to be guarding against with London that we didn't create this assumption that there was a super human element to athletes, that was the term that Channel 4 used. I always bear in mind many people in this room will know Baroness Tanny Gray Thompson.  Because the normal, to use the word again, the normalising of this will be when it's all about people's desire to engage in sport rather than see it as being necessarily to become a Paralympian. And then thirdly to the inspiration, the question that was asked about who we're trying to inspire is that British Paralympic Association will always, of course, with our members, the governing bodies, have a focus around disabled people playing sport because that's why we ultimately want to drive interest and awareness. But it's actually not the inspiration point. The inspiration point, I think, a non-disabled person myself is the perceptions of the non-disabled majority in society. I don't actually think that you can run programs for that. I think you just have to create the tipping point, the balance of people's perception that they actually realise that even if it is Johnny Peacock dancing the jive, that what they thought was possible isn't actually the case, or sorry, not possible isn't the case. And then that gets translated into other areas. So they might actually be an employer, or they might be a teacher, or they might be indeed a waitress, and they might actually make a different decision based on their perception being changed. So when we talk about impact on society, it's far more that that's going to be the long-term benefit than perhaps the very narrow definition of disabled people aiming to be elite athletes. I'm a little bit conscious that, although the sake is on ice, the soas wine may not be on ice, and the canapes might be getting cool. So I'm only going to take one more question from Minister Eda, because he's a very important man. It's 100 years old, to be fair. I think that's lack of investment in the infrastructure. It's being in the foothills, not at the summit. It's the belief that the way that we can improve society has started rather than come to the conclusion and not thinking that London was supposed to solve all those issues. You're absolutely right, and we have also society evidence of people's treatment of disabled people still, you know, with a huge amount to go. The incidence of disability hate crime in the last few years, for example, is rising. So I don't want to suggest that it was this great solution. What it was was a fantastic catalyst to the opportunity for change. And I think that, I mean, I know, for example, that the Architects Association has now, through an association with London 2012, created a module in their qualification, which includes accessible design. So maybe in 30 years' time, all the buildings and escalators and lifts and everything will be what they should be. But we're in the foothills, not the summit of the journey. Can I just, real quick, because I've actually been thinking a lot about this, right? And I think one of the big differences with Tokyo, and I don't know London's history of disability activism and things like that, is that Japan has been talking about barrier-free environments since the 70s. And even earlier than that, I mean, if you go to Japan, part of the challenge is barrier-free, is that there's so many different kinds of disability that you're trying to address, that one, creating one barrier-free format creates another barrier for somebody else. I mean, one of the best examples of this is the blocks on the sidewalks that are kind of bumpy for those that are visually impaired, and someone that has issues with walking, that's actually a new impairment. But Japan has been thinking about these issues aside from the Paralympics for a really long time. And so urban planning, when I looked at the FESPIC Games in 1989, they were already talking at that point about how those games were going to be used to put into place all these plans that they've been talking about for 10 years. And so there's this idea that it does become the impetus, right? And I totally agree, and I think that what's happening is that this is pushing Tokyo to do things that they've been talking about and that they need to do because they have this rapidly-aging population. And so I think that's where the positive side of the Paralympic comes in. And the trick is, as you make, the point you made, that you can't rely on this event. Where for me, the concern about the inspiration is that for most people, it ends the day the Paralympics end, right? That's where the inspiration ends and then it starts again at the next Paralympics. And so you need to find that bridge and you need to push beyond the event and it needs to be more than just the event. When I was talking with the Japanese reporter I spoke with, it was this weird dual interview thing. He was interviewing me and I was interviewing him. And he asked me what my concerns were with the games. I said, I think the games are going to be fine. They're going to be amazing. Because Japan did amazing in 64 with nothing to start and look at what they've got now. And so they're going to be amazing. It's going to be the stuff around the games that happens. And seeing this is a beginning of something more. So I agree with you wholeheartedly. You've got to see this at the beginning. But it's also something that has been building. My other fear, and this is partly a critique of the IPC, I guess, is that they're going to use Tokyo without any of that understanding of the history behind it and say, look at what the Paralympics can do, which is absolutely true, but there's context. And the context is missing if you only say, the Paralympics create change. They do, but there's a whole history to this that leads to the things happening in Tokyo and leads to things happening in London. London and Tokyo are two very similar places in the respect that they have this evolving legacy, I think, of the connection to the Paralympics. That's not true in Rio. It's not true in Sochi. It's not going to be true in Beijing. So I think those are the kind of issues that I've been thinking a lot about. OK, thanks. I'm taking these guys to dinner at 8.20 where they can discuss amongst themselves. But I'm going to encourage them to come up here and talk to you over drinks. And I just want to say one quick thing. I found a Minister Eda's book because all his speeches that he's given recently are very direct. Toshiba funding for this lecture series has now run out. We're looking for new sponsors. So if anybody would like to put their corporate brand on it, their logo on it, come and talk to me. I'd be very happy to take your money and your brand. Thank you to our speakers.


Hey midshipman, this is Jeff Irvin, Navy football fan, checking in from non-Ever Space Camp, Coomble, Icefall, and Nepal. They don't get the Navy game up here, but one thing they do have is this. Go Navy! Beat Army!


And now, for your Strong Europe Spotlight. 74 years ago, Allied soldiers began airborne and amphibious assaults to liberate occupied France and Europe. Today, those partnerships and transatlantic bonds are being reinforced by service members stationed throughout Europe and the United States as they commemorate the anniversary of Operation Overlord. The jump was much more complicated than it is right now. And it's great to just be out here and honor the sacrifice and honestly the great courage of our great Allied team 74 years ago. So that rested heavily on my heart and it really didn't mean a lot to me to get out here and kind of represent them jumping here. Everybody was totally excited about it. It didn't matter if it was a French soldier, German soldier, American, it didn't really matter.  Thank you for watching.