More Than Medals by Dennis J. Frost

Author:Dennis J. Frost [Frost, Dennis J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, Japan, Sports & Recreation, Olympics & Paralympics, Disability Sports
ISBN: 9781501753091
Google: PzXUDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2021-01-15T01:44:03+00:00

A World beyond the 1998 Games

Given these sorts of policy changes, the financial outlays that they entailed, and the various human-friendly campaigns just described, it is understandable that many people at the time and since have credited Nagano’s Paralympics with advancing barrier-free principles in the region and in Japan more broadly.33 At the very least, it would seem that these Games—much like the FESPIC Games in Kobe—served as a fresh and pressing incentive for enacting preexisting plans and measures designed to support those with disabilities. Yet therein lies a key point, one that can be easily overlooked when focusing on the legacies of these sorts of events: neither Nagano nor Japan was a blank slate, waiting for the Paralympics to leave their marks. To understand why and how the 1998 Paralympics had the impact that they did, it is also necessary to take into account a number of factors beyond the Games themselves.

For one, the response to the Paralympics in Nagano was grounded in the region’s significantly longer history of engagement with progressive disability-related approaches. As early as 1975 (predating the first Winter Paralympic Games), the Ministry of Health and Welfare designated Nagano City as one of its Social Welfare Model Cities. The city’s initial long-term plan for promoting accessibility dated from the early 1980s and was explicitly linked with, if not directly inspired by, the UN International Year of Disabled Persons. The guidelines that the city later revised in the lead-up to the Games had already been on the books for more than a decade. The initial tagline for these older guidelines, “Developing a community where everyone can live well,” reflected a clear commitment to fostering greater accessibility, even if the guidelines themselves lacked the legal heft that the later prefectural ordinance provided.34

These earlier policies serve as reminders that many people in the region had been working to improve accessibility well before the Paralympics. Miura Jirō, the Paralympic torch runner from Miyata Village who had been active locally for some fifteen years, was a case in point. In addition, support for hosting the Games in Nagano emerged early on at both the governmental and volunteer levels in no small part because organizers were not starting from scratch. A volunteer group like NPBK might have been formed specifically in response to the Paralympics, but many of its members were already engaged in various forms of disability-related advocacy. As just one example, Ikeda Jun, a vice chair of NPBK, had been a long-time prefectural case worker who had become involved with the Independent Living Movement as it was beginning to gain support in Japan during the late 1980s and early 1990s. A key participant in NPBK’s school outreach programs, Ikeda was instrumental in launching the group’s study tour to the United States. In the months immediately following the Paralympics, he helped establish Human Net Nagano, an NGO dedicated to promoting and supporting opportunities for people with disabilities to live independently in their home communities. Although Human Net Nagano might be considered

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