When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that Tokyo would get the 2020 Summer Games, the official Japanese delegation leapt for joy while the government back home breathed a sigh of relief for the validation on the world stage.  But not everyone is cheering.

The Olympics are pushing around 79-year old Kohei Jinno for the second time in his life.  In 1964, Jinno’s home and business were torn down to make way for the massive developments on the west side of the Yamanote Loop that would host that year’s Olympic games. 

Now, Tokyo officials are telling him he has to move again to make way for expansion for the even bigger games.

“I don’t want to see the Olympics at all,” Jinno said, “Deep inside, I have a kind of grudge against the Olympics.”

Back then, he had a small Tobacco shop.  But with his home and business paved over, he had to make do on cleaning cars to support his family of four with a one-room apartment providing the roof over their heads.  Meanwhile, the new Japan with high rises and bullet trains rushed all around him.

Eventually, Jinno was able to save enough to open another tiny business selling cigarettes out the front window, located in the housing block where he lives; a building that has to go because it sits beneath the footprint of the proposed new Tokyo Olympic Stadium.

Although Japan is reusing much of the well-maintained 1964 infrastructure, there will be all sorts of new development to prepare for 2020.  And Jinno thinks that money ought to have been spent rebuilding the northeast, still suffering from the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

“I feel very upset because they will spend a lot of money on the new stadium after decades of pouring taxpayers’ money into the old stadium to maintain something that is only used a few times a year,” he said.

Kohei Jinno is just one of thousands of people to whom the Olympics are no gift.  While Tokyo and a couple of other cities continued to shine through the long economic slump of the 1990s, the crash of 2008, and the disasters of 2011, other cities and towns have yet to recover.  Many cities are blighted with “Shutter Dori”, largely abandoned malls, arcades, and shopping streets where the business shut down and never came back.