INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

ACTIVITIES OF THE JAPAN OLYMPIC ACADEMY (JOA)
Dr Junko TAHARA (JPN)
The Japan Olympic Academy (JOA) was established in 1978,
mainly by persons who had participated in the IOA sessions. The
JOA, which has been cooperating closely with, but acting as an
independent entity of the JOC, celebrated its 25 th anniversary last year.
The number of the JOA members as of March 2004 is 232 with 23
directors on the board.
The JOA’s office is located in Shibuya, in the center of Tokyo,
and has committees and branches nationwide.
The JOA has four committees, namely (1) General Affairs Committee,
(2) Olympic Charter Committee, (3) Public Relations Committee and
(4) Olympic Education Committee.
The most important event is the JOA Session, which is held on an
annual basis. Major programs include reports by IOA session
participants and a panel discussion on a theme selected by the Board
of Directors. From time to time, we also invite guest speakers from
overseas to our annual sessions.
We celebrated the 25 th anniversary of the JOA in 2003, last year.
In commemoration of this important year, we invited speakers Dr Hai
Ren from China, Mr Kwan-il Bahng from Korea, and Dr John J.
MacAloon from the U.S. to our session on the “Olympic Movement in
Asia.” In our fruitful discussions, there was a proposal to establish an
East Asia Olympic Academy in the future.
Now, I would like to talk about the challenges we face at the JOA.
There are two major problems. One is financial. Because of limited
financial resources, all JOA activities are conducted on a volunteer
basis. Without a clerical staff to handle day-to-day operations, the
more are activities become active, the heavier the workload members
must undertake.
The other problem, which you may be surprised to learn, is that
there are few young people who are interested in the Olympic
movement in Japan. We have considerable difficulty recruiting
competent young people to send to the IOA Sessions. One of the
reasons is the lack of Olympic education programs. For this reason,
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