The Japanese who spread the Paralympics 20:18 on August 25th

August 25, 2020. To tell the truth, it was the day when the Tokyo Paralympics started.

The name "Paralympic" is now known to everyone. Do you know how this word became widely known?

Actually, it was a poster designed by one Japanese.
(Daisuke Narita, Reporter, Network News Department)

"PARALYMPIC" to the world

I am Haruto Takahashi, the designer who created the poster.

After the war, Mr. Takahashi played an active role as a leading public relations designer, and at the 1964 Tokyo Paralympics, he was in charge of designing official posters, competition marks and medals.

Two years ago, this is a poster for invitation to the tournament that Mr. Takahashi produced for overseas. The characters "PARALYMPIC" are designed to stand out most on a bright pink background reminiscent of Japanese cherry blossoms.

The Paralympic Games began with the rehabilitation of soldiers with injured spinal cords in World War II. At the time, it was called the "International Stoke Mandeville Convention" from the name of the birthplace of British hospitals.

However, Mr. Takahashi decided to put the name "Paralympic", which is a combination of the English "paraplegia", which means paralysis in the lower body, and the "Olympics", on the poster for the Tokyo Games.

Takahashi's eldest son, Toru, who has taken the same design path as his father. I had never heard of it from my father when I was alive, but I analyze this as the same designer.

Toru Takahashi
“At that time, the media was limited, and posters were the main players to make the tournament widely known. However, posters must be able to convey a message to people passing by in an instant and understand. I don't think I used the word "Paralympic," which is similar to the Olympics and has a good vocabulary, in order to widely convey the Games that were hardly known at the time.

War and Paralympics

The Paralympic Games are said to have begun to recover the wounded soldiers. Actually, Mr. Takahashi himself was deeply involved in the war.

“
Tanomuzo Coal” “Savings Suldaque Strong Kunaru Mo country Mo”

During the Pacific War, he worked on many posters calling for people to cooperate in the war, such as securing coal and saving coal, and cohesion.

As the world became full of war and the nation was mobilized, Mr. Takahashi, who was active as a painter and photographer, was ordered to make posters calling for cooperation to the military.

Mr. Takahashi was working on a work that could be said to have played a part in propaganda. He says he didn't talk much about his own experience of war until his death.

Toru Takahashi
“My father was a person who didn't drink and wasn't the type to talk about himself to his family. He might not want to talk about the war experience because it was such a painful experience.”

Found "sketch of the burn mark"

Takahashi died in 1998 at the age of 84. After his death, Toru found a sketchbook when he was organizing his relics.

It was written on the cover as "City of Horobi".

The state of the city of Tokyo, which was burnt down by the air raid. 107 images of post-war postwar Tokyo were depicted, including burned-out people and war-damaged orphans.

March 10th, 1945, the dawn of the Tokyo air raid. Mr. Takahashi's home was also burned with an incendiary bomb with B29.

It is Sumida River just one year after the air raid. Many of the grave markers standing along the river do not know their identities, so it is written as "Munshi".

Sketching continued until the summer of this year.

Glance to the injured people

The sketches show the people who are in distress due to the war, such as burned-out family members, demobilized soldiers, and war-orphans.

Mr. Takahashi, who had not revealed this existence to his family in his life, had the text of the person at the time left in his sketchbook.

From "Horobi no Machi",
"Sketching in Yakinohara was not an acceptable situation. However, I could not help but draw the scenery of this terrible defeated city, even in times of anxiety without eating and eating. They were all strange shapes of the fraying things, but they were the remains of our past and the embodiment of our hearts.'

When he found the sketch, Toru says he felt his father's strong will.

Toru Takahashi
“My father lost his house and his brother died in the air raid. I think I felt a strong sense of duty to leave a picture of what happened in the war and convey it to future generations.”

In peaceful times

After the war, Mr. Takahashi began to stand out again in the world of design. This is a poster for the red feather community chest created by Mr. Takahashi in 1950.

Mr. Takahashi worked for about a month by visiting the facilities that received the donation.

This poster was drawn to call for donations to war-orphans. Toru was the model of the boy who was pleased to change his clothes from the old one to the new one.

In addition, Mr. Takahashi will continue to work on public welfare advertisements, such as posters looking for a person to pick up war orphans and posters seeking donations for flood damage in the Tohoku region.

Unlike brave posters during the war, postwar works always had a gentle line of sight to people with weak social positions.

To spread the Paralympic Games

Two years before the Tokyo Games, Mr. Takahashi was asked to cooperate with the publicity of the Games. I worked hard to make people widely known about the sports competition for the physically challenged, which had a low profile unlike the Olympic Games.

This official poster symbolizing the Tokyo Paralympics. The actual archery player and the characters "PARALYMPIC". Designed by Mr. Takahashi.

It is said that most of the Japanese athletes who participated in the tournament were patients at a hospital made for wounded soldiers.

Mr. Takahashi was involved in the Tokyo Paralympics for about four years until he edited the photo book published after the competition.

According to the official materials at that time, all the participants of the convention worked as "servants" in principle.

Mission to “communicate and inform”

The Paralympic Games took root as a word that means "another Olympics", which is a combination of the Greek words "para" and "Olympic Games", and has developed into a large-scale Olympic competition.

"Public relations activities must be able to exert people's power by "communication and communication","

Takahashi continued to devote himself to the field of social welfare even after the Tokyo Paralympics. It was

Toru Takahashi
“Many of my designers who have been involved in propaganda before and during the war advanced to the world of commercial design after the war, but my dad continued to work in social welfare. I couldn't hear it, but I think that the experience of keeping sketches while witnessing the appearance of people who were burnt after the end of the war had a big impact on the world. Perhaps you thought that informing was your mission as a professional.