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Golden streamers fell from the ceiling of a gymnasium in Komazawa Park, built for the 1964 Games when Japan became the first Asian nation to host them, where organisers estimated some 2000 people were gathered for a night of events including concerts and a midnight fun run before the decision was broadcast on a giant screen shortly after 5:00 a.m. (2000 GMT).
People screamed, embraced and waved Japanese flags, chanting “Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo.” Some held banners saying “Celebration!”
“I’m really, really happy, because everyone was saying Madrid would win,” said Ryoko Abe, 34, who brought her one-year-old son Shunosuke because it would be a “good memory for him”.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had made an impassioned speech to International Olympic Committee members at the Buenos Aires vote.
It completed the final push for the Games which Tokyo has touted as everything from more stimulus for an economy tiptoeing back from stagnation to the final step of recovery from a devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami that set off multiple reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
The committee was in no mood for new adventures when it picked Tokyo as the host of the 2020 summer Olympics, opting for a “safe pair of hands” that could also boost its finances.
Tokyo beat Turkish metropolis Istanbul in a landslide vote after Madrid were eliminated in the first round, taking the world’s biggest multi-sports event back to Asia for the first time since the Beijing 2008 Games.
Tokyo will now host the Games for a second time since 1964 while Istanbul, hoping the IOC would again go to unchartered waters after giving the Olympics to Rio de Janeiro and to South America for the first time, go away empty handed.
“All three bids were strong bids,” IOC Executive Board member John Coates told Reuters. “But Tokyo’s bid was very, very good for athletes; the concentration of venues there is very good.”
“It was also good for the Olympic movement because much of our commercial support is in Asia,” he said.
Coates also hinted the conflict in neighbouring Syria had been on the IOC members’ minds.
Asked whether delays in preparations for the Rio Games may have alarmed members and could have swung votes in favour of Tokyo’s solid bid, Coates said: “I may have heard that.”
Influential IOC member Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, who also heads the Olympic solidarity fund and is President of the Association of national Olympic committees, said it was exactly the Rio delays that swung it in Tokyo’s favour.
The 1964 Olympics, which Tokyo hosted after beating rival bids from Detroit, Vienna and Brussels, are remembered with such pride that the anniversary of their 10 October opening is a national holiday.
Long seen as a front-runner, Tokyo’s chances were clouded by a series of revelations about the Fukushima nuclear plant, whose operator has been forced to reverse denials and admit that hundreds of tonnes of radioactive water are pouring into the Pacific Ocean each day. Radiation levels have also spiked.
Abe’s government said last week it would spend almost half a billion dollars to try to fix the water crisis. Critics said the government’s sudden embrace of the issue was aimed largely at winning the Olympic bid.
The victory is likely to give Abe a popularity boost and could potentially spur his signature pro-growth policies for the world’s third-biggest economy, bringing real gains in terms of construction and tourism.
