The Heisei Emperor: Supporting sports for disabled

February 17, 2019

Tokyo--Emperor Akihito has supported the development of sports for people with disabilities since he served as honorary president of the Tokyo Paralympic Games in 1964 when he was Crown Prince.

The national sports festival for people with disabilities is now held annually every autumn following the "kokutai" national sports festival. The idea of holding the event for disabled athletes was proposed by the Emperor.

Pioneering Sports Festival for Disabled

The Tokyo Paralympics was held in November 1964, a month after the Summer Olympic Games in the Japanese capital. Sports for the disabled were not popular in Japan at the time.

The Emperor and Empress Michiko, then Crown Prince and Princess, attended the opening and closing ceremonies for both the international competition and related domestic competition events.

During the events, the couple visited the venues many times.

Inviting people involved in the Paralympics to his palace to thank them for their contributions to the 1964 Games, the then Crown Prince said that he wanted such a sports event for disabled people to be held every year in Japan.

Prompted by the remark, a national sports competition for physically challenged athletes became an annual event in Japan from 1965.

Every year at the annual event, the Emperor delivered a speech at the opening ceremony.

At the 20th such competition, held in October 1984 in Nara Prefecture, western Japan, the Emperor said he was glad that people had started to regard sports for the disabled as sports for maintaining physical and mental health as well as for enjoyment although they were initially utilized mostly for medical purposes.

Impressed by Development of Disabled Sports

In 1989, when the era name was changed to Heisei in line with Emperor Akihito's accession to the Chrysanthemum Throne, the 25th sports competition for physically challenged people was held in Sapporo, Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, in September.

"Since I had been following the event since the first competition, I was impressed to see the development of sports for the disabled," the Emperor said at the time.

Wishing for further public understanding, the Emperor passed on the duty of attending the national sports festival for the disabled to his eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito.

In 2001, the competition was integrated with a similar event for people with intellectual disabilities and became the national sports festival for people with disabilities, the largest sporting event for the disabled in Japan.

In December 2008, a ceremony was held in Tokyo to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the enthronement of Emperor Akihito.

In his congratulatory speech at the ceremony, Eiichi Ogawa, then chairman of a federation for organizations for physically challenged people across Japan, said, "Physically challenged people who tended to stay indoors started enjoying sports outside care facilities and they became confident that they could do so despite their disabilities."

Ogawa was invited to the Imperial residence in autumn 2009 and received words of appreciation directly from the Emperor.

"The encouragement by the Emperor for sports for the disabled has been promoting their social participation," Ogawa, who died in 2013, once said.

At a press conference in 1999 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his ascension to the throne, the Emperor said, "I consider it an important duty of ours to be close in our hearts to the disabled, the elderly and those who suffer from disaster, as well as those who are dedicating themselves to others or society as a whole."

"I was happy that many people were as interested in the Paralympics as much as in the Olympics," the Emperor said at a press conference in December 2016, referring to the Rio de Janeiro Olympic and Paralympic Games in the year. Jiji Press