Yeong-Hyun Kim, Reflections

Face Masks, the Olympics, and Toyota City: My Kohei Miura Visiting Professorship at Chubu University during the COVID Pandemic

I was awarded the 2020 Kohei Miura Visiting Professorship to conduct field research on the urban impact of the Olympic Games in Japan.  Due to the COVID pandemic, however, my visit to Chubu University had to be postponed twice and was finally realized in Summer 2022.  Upon arrival, I noticed that everyone on campus was wearing face masks (Photo 1).  When I say everyone, I mean everyone, not just rule-abiding students, but also those who were walking alone late at night!  At that time, masks had already been optional for months on the Athens campus.  While I was travelling to the former Olympic sites in Tokyo (1968 and 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics), Nagano (1994 Winter Olympics), and Sapporo (1972 Winter Olympics), I was amazed that people at the train stations, streets, parks, and all other public spaces were all masked.  Still having a fresh memory of how politicized mask-wearing was in Ohio, I came to deeply admire the Japanese culture of being considerate of public health and safety. 

Certainly, mandatory mask wearing did not serve to divide the Japanese public during the COVID pandemic.  Instead, the Olympics did.  Throughout my three-month stay, the Tokyo Olympic bribery scandal was among the top news stories.  The Tokyo Olympics were initially promoted as a “Recovery Olympics” to support the disaster-affected areas by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, but, unfortunately, the sports event became dubbed as the “COVID Olympics” for its one-year postponement due to the pandemic.  And then, the corruption scandal involving the Olympic organizers shocked the Japanese public and the term “Bribery Olympics” started appearing in news headlines.  Japanese public opinion on the tainted legacy of the Tokyo Olympics was further divided by the City of Sapporo’s decision to bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics.  Some viewed Sapporo’s bid as an opportunity for their country to recover from the disappointments of Tokyo 2020, while others expressed growing distrust of their government’s motives in promoting another Olympics in Japan.  Downtown Sapporo was decked with promotional posters of the 2030 Winter Olympics (Photo 2), but at the same time a series of anti-Olympic protests were held in both Tokyo and Sapporo1).  It was very interesting to witness what sharply divided the otherwise relatively united and mask-wearing Japanese public.  

Along with a mask-wearing culture and the Olympic divide, the heavy presence of automotive, aerospace, and steel industries in Aichi Prefecture captured my attention as an urban economic geographer.  Aichi is where Chubu University is located.  Much like Ohio in the US manufacturing belt, Aichi has been at the center of Japan’s Chubu (meaning central in Japanese) industrial region.  I took buses and trains to look around places across Aichi2), which allowed me to realize that Aichi and Ohio shared the common ground of being home to numerous manufacturing centers and industrial workers.  A 50-minute train ride took me to Toyota City where Toyota Motors is headquartered (Photo 3).  On the way I saw scores of auto component manufacturers that serve as parts suppliers to Toyota – indeed, Toyota’s just-in-time delivery system was first implemented and made successful in Aichi.  Although Aichi is not yet facing the challenge of deindustrialization and shrinking that many older industrial cities of Ohio have endured in recent decades, the prefecture and local governments are pressured to prepare for a shift to a post-manufacturing economy.  Aichi and Ohio could make a great comparative study because of their industrial similarities and, as importantly, their different responses to the forces of deindustrialization.  On my train ride back from Toyota City I was thinking that my next visit to Chubu University should include a closer look at small-sized industrial cities in Aichi and their similarities and differences from those in Ohio.