Who knows, finally, what swung things for the Tokyo 2020 bid? Clearly the late entrance into the Buenos Aires maelstrom of lobbying of the graceful Princess Hisako of Takamado - fluent in English and French, President of nine sports bodies - had a dramatic effect on International Olympic Committee (IOC) members, just as the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair reportedly had on them in the last knockings before the vote for the 2012 Games.

Clearly the decision to meet the worries over their leaking nuclear power station in Fukushima was another vital element of Tokyo's success - letters on the subject were circulated to all IOC members, and the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzō Abe, offered the following pledge on the issue: "Let me assure you the situation is under control. It has never done, and never will do, any damage to Tokyo."

There will have been emotional persuasion in the gathering together a few days before the vote of a long tableful of medal-winning athletes, ranging from a veteran of the football competition at the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 to a Paralympic swimmer with 15 golds.

The Tokyo bid committee return victorious to their home country


Tokyo, of course, has strong finances and a highly developed infrastructure. And you like to think the Tokyo vote was a vote for clean sport - a reflection of their strong anti-doping record, in marked contrast to the controversies and mass suspensions which undermined the efforts of their rivals in Turkey and Spain.

The comment of Seoul 1988 Games swimming gold medallist Daichi Suzuki, now President of the Japanese Swimming Association, that "we don't understand why we would cheat", and his additional assertion that taking the doping route to success was "not a Japanese characteristic" crystallised a profoundly important strand of their bidding effort.

But surely the key element for a nation that has suffered disastrous earthquakes and tsunami damage in the last two years, natural disruptions which have triggered the current alarm over leaking radioactivity, is the contention voiced by Ryosuke Irie, the London 2012 swimming medallist, that sport can help bring the country together.

That, and the unfailing ability of the Japanese to adapt and cope with whatever fate sends their way.

The last time the Olympics were held in Japan - the Winter Games hosted by Nagano in 1998 - the rumbling natural background made its presence felt during the competition with an earthquake which hit the city and many other central areas of the country which measured 5.0 on the Richter scale.

No serious harm or damage was done, thankfully, as buildings designed for just such an eventuality did no more than judder and sway. I know, because I was in one at the time, and once the ceiling light had ceased swinging back and forth, there was no other clue as to what had taken place.

The 18th Winter Games, however, called upon other aspects of Japanese flexibility as fog, driving rain and too much snow played havoc with the alpine skiing programme, where the showpiece men's downhill event on the opening Sunday had to be postponed three times.

The Nagano Olympics had to deal with fog, ice, too much snow, and one earthquake, but the organisers skated on, just as Shae-Lynn Bourne and Viktor Kraatz did in the ice dance exhibition


But the Games eventually cohered. The transportation, by and large, held up, the hosts were unfailingly friendly and more flexible than many had darkly predicted, and three new Olympic elements combined to provide outstanding points of interest.

The introduction of National Hockey League players to the Games resulted, belatedly, in a memorable tournament.

Canada departed with dignity intact after losing their semi-final to the eventual winners, the Czech Republic, on a shoot-out. Wayne Gretzky, making his Olympic and international farewell at the age of 37, was pained but restrained.

"When you don't win, you have to accept the lumps and take your bruises," he said. "When you win, you accept the flowers and roses."

The US collection of NHL millionaires, in contrast, left the Games talking money. Nothing unusual there, perhaps. But in this case it was the amount of damage they had caused to some of their rooms in the Olympic Village after being eliminated.

The organisers said the cost in terms of broken chairs and doors was $3,000 (£1,900/€2,200). The US players claimed it was no more than $1,000 (£630/€750). The cost in terms of bad public relations will be less easy to put a figure on.

The introduction of snowboarding to the Olympics proved predictably fraught as a culture clash saw Canada's Ross Rebagliati stripped of the slalom gold after testing positive for marijuana, to widespread exclamations of "What did you expect?"

Ross Rebagliati (centre) kept his gold for the first Olympic snowboard event after a whiff of controversy

But a dopey attitude to drawing up rules enabled the Canadian to reclaim the medal on appeal and wear it with pride while he was being "routinely questioned" by the Japanese police - for 11 hours. A technicality allowed Rebagliati to escape the unhappy distinction of becoming the first athlete to be suspended for taking a performance-inhibiting substance.

Although the US television rights holder, CBS, lost its most potent ratings-grabber when the US team disappeared at the quarterfinal stage of the ice hockey with three losses out of four defeats, there was still Tara Lipinski versus Michelle Kwan in figure skating - US v US - to lift ratings which had sagged to two-thirds of the levels averaged in the 1994 Games.

The last addition, curling, did its profile nothing but good with a series of absorbing games, fully justifying its introduction after being included as a demonstration event on previous occasions.

But if anyone wants an illustration of what Japanese success in sport does for the spirits of the nation, they need look no further than the exploits at the Nagano Games of ski jumper Masahiko Harada.

Harada, whose last jump at the 1994 Olympics had cost Japan the ski jump team gold in the 120m hill, came to the 1998 team contest as an individual bronze medallist whose form on his home ground had been wildly inconsistent.

Masahiko Harada's emotional success in the Nagano ski jump team event brought a nation together in celebration


He was consistent at least in his inconsistency. The first of his two jumps for the national team was so awful - 79.50 metres - that it was bettered by the bulk of the Korean jumpers who finished 13th and last.

But his final jump was 137m - further than which no jumper had gone. And so the man who had always seemed to smile in defeat became the man who cried in victory. In emotional terms, the effect was off the Richter scale. Now Japan has the chance to experience similar sporting invigoration.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. To follow him on Twitter click here.