Paralympic Swimming Medalist Kawai Takes Helm of Japan Sports Agency

By Yuji Kondo

8:00 JST, November 8, 2025

The Japan Sports Agency celebrated its 10th anniversary on Oct. 1. As the central command for sports administration, the JSA steers efforts across a wide range of areas, including creating environments in which everyone can enjoy sports, nurturing top athletes, and hosting various international competitions such as the Olympics and Paralympics.

The agency has faced two major challenges in its first decade, one relating to major international events and the other relating to school sports clubs. Now it enters its second decade with a new commissioner at the helm.

The sports agency was established in 2015. Two years prior, Tokyo had been selected to host the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The primary reason for the agency’s creation was the need for a national command center to ensure the smooth operation of events and the development of athletes.

In other words, its initial top priority was to ensure the success of “Tokyo 2020.” However, the Games faced an unprecedented situation: a one-year postponement due to the pandemic. Despite the unusual circumstance of having almost no in-person spectators, the Olympics and Paralympics were successfully held in 2021, earning high praise worldwide.

However, corruption and collusion scandals were uncovered after the Games were over. Public trust in hosting large-scale sporting events plummeted, and Sapporo’s bid to host the Winter Olympics and Paralympics came to a halt.

Consequently, “transparency” in sports event management emerged as a new challenge after Tokyo 2020. In response, the Japan Sports Agency established governance guidelines in March 2023 regarding the organization of large-scale sporting events. The guidelines established 11 principles to prevent misconduct, including establishing necessary organizational management regulations, proactively and voluntarily disclosing information, and appropriately managing conflicts of interest.

Following these guidelines, the local organizing committee for the 2025 World Athletics Championships that took place in Tokyo this September published its compliance status annually. Furthermore, building on the experience of Tokyo 2020, the committee excluded advertising agency personnel from its board and marketing department. The committee independently acquired sponsorships, a task for which it had previously relied on advertising agencies. This effort secured ¥4 billion in sponsorship and donation income — ¥1 billion more than initially planned.

As a result, the event took place successfully, attracting over 610,000 visitors over nine days. Mitsugi Ogata, chairman of the local organizing committee, expressed visible relief, saying: “After the series of scandals at Tokyo 2020, we were initially worried whether an international event could even be held. Seeing the wonderful response to this event, I feel we have been recognized.”

Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics, also stated, “The passion and confidence that Japanese society has for sports could be the starting point for future bids, including for the Olympics,” praising the positive impact that the World Athletics Championships had on the Japanese public’s attitude toward sports.

Starting on Nov. 15, the Deaflympics, an international competition for athletes who are deaf or hard of hearing, will begin in Tokyo. Furthermore, the Asian Games, Asia’s largest sporting festival, will be held in Nagoya and other cities next fall. The next challenge will be whether the “legacy” of the World Athletics Championships can be passed on reliably to these international sporting events.

The second major challenge the Japan Sports Agency faced was club activity reform in junior high schools. These activities are a uniquely Japanese practice in which students interested in sports, culture or the arts participate under teacher guidance as part of their school education. These activities occur before school, after school or on holidays. The teachers providing this guidance often dedicate themselves almost entirely without compensation. Teachers often work holidays and are sometimes tasked with coaching sports in which they have no experience, leading to criticism that this system creates excessive workloads.

Consequently, in 2020, the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry announced a policy to reform club activities at public junior high schools, primarily to reduce teachers’ workloads. The goal was a “community-based approach” in which local private sports clubs and organizations would be entrusted with coaching duties. In 2022, reform guidelines were established. Local governments nationwide were urged to establish councils with sports organizations and parents to develop “promotion plans” and “guidelines.”

While formulating these measures, however, the sports agency identified a new problem. Due to Japan’s declining number of births, the survival of club activities was threatened, particularly in junior high schools in depopulating areas. Starting in 2023, at the beginning of the reform period, the government increased model projects in which students from multiple junior high schools gather at regional clubs established by local governments and other entities. Additionally, the rules were changed to allow regional clubs to participate in Nippon Junior High School Physical Culture Association tournaments, which had previously only accepted school-based teams.

As a result, the number of school clubs nationwide entrusted to private or government-run clubs in each region for holiday activities is expected to reach approximately 23,600 by the end of fiscal 2025, accounting for more than half of all clubs. However, concerns remain, including that “activities won’t continue if national support stops,” “there are significant regional differences in enthusiasm,” and “regional clubs can’t develop strong athletes.” Clearly, the reform is only halfway there.

Atsushi Nakazawa, a Waseda University professor specializing in sports sociology and club activities, said: “Rather than applying uniform standards, we shouldn’t rule out continuing school-based club activities depending on local circumstances. We should carefully listen to local voices and reexamine what reforms are truly necessary and why.”

In light of this, the national government’s implementation period for the reforms was extended in May of this year, lasting six years until fiscal 2031. This underscores how difficult it is to change the deeply rooted structure of club activities in Japan. The JSA will require meticulous and persistent leadership to accelerate reforms in lagging regions.

On Oct. 1, the sports agency welcomed Junichi Kawai, a Paralympic gold medalist in the fully blind swimming category, as its new commissioner. Kawai lost his sight around his third year of junior high school and is a top Paralympic athlete. He has won five gold medals at the Paralympics and a total of 21 Paralympic medals overall, the most won by any Japanese para-athlete.

Kawai stated his aspirations as commissioner: “I accepted this position believing it sends a national message about overcoming disability. I will spare no effort to advance as many policies as possible and create an environment where all citizens come to see sports as something irreplaceable.”

Appointing the first Paralympian as commissioner at the JSA’s 10-year milestone sends a powerful message. It signals the integrated promotion of the Olympics and Paralympics, the development of a sports environment accessible to all, and the realization of a more inclusive society. We look forward to the efforts of the new commissioner to enhance the value and presence of sports in Japan.

Political Pulse appears every Saturday.

Yuji Kondo

Yuji Kondo is a senior writer in the Sports Department of The Yomiuri Shimbun