The competition is aimed at those with design experience, including the young and old, design students and professionals.

As a first step, applicants will be requested to submit their personal profiles and examples of previous design work for evaluation by January 19, 2018.

Those judged to meet the necessary criteria will be invited to submit designs for the rear side of the Olympic medals and for the front and rear sides of the Paralympic medals.

Creators must submit their proposals for all three designs as a set.

A Tokyo 2020 medal design selection panel, comprising members of the Tokyo 2020 Brand Advisory Board, former athletes and professional designers, will review all entries and select a shortlist of designs by April 2018.

The designers of these and a manufacturing institution will create three-dimensional mock-ups of the shortlisted entries, with the winner set to be selected in August 2018.

The new medals are due to be unveiled in 2019.

Japanese boxer Ryota Murata, a gold medallist at the London 2012 Olympics and the reigning World Boxing Association middleweight champion, insists the medals "need to last forever".

"A simple design that you never tire of is better," he said.

"The Tokyo 1964 and Nagano 1998 medals were impressive in that they had a Japanese feel to them."

Earlier this year, Tokyo 2020 commenced a nationwide collection of discarded and obsolete electronic devices in order to use the metal they contain in the production of medals.

Tokyo 2020 claims it is the first time such an innovative and environmentally-friendly approach has been adopted by an Olympic and Paralympic Games Organising Committee.

Between April and October, approximately 1,874 tons of discarded devices were collected by municipal authorities across Japan.

Over the same period, approximately 1.78 million used mobile phones have been handed in at NTT DOCOMO stores around the nation. 

A Japanese webpage has been created for the medal design competition, which can be accessed by clicking here.