Amid hopes of Olympic renewal, economic and safety tests for Tokyo

The sun rose at 5:18 a.m. Sunday in the Japanese capital. A minute later came the good news.

For the second time, Tokyo is set to be the home of the Summer Olympics, after members of the International Olympic Committee overwhelmingly picked the city above Istanbul and Madrid to host the 2020 Summer Games.

As alerts went out to smartphones across the still-drowsy city, about 2,000 locals at a gymnasium who had awaited the IOC decision overnight erupted in cheers.

"We're very happy to host the Olympics in 2020," Kosei Tomiyama, a Tokyo retiree, said. "I'm 79 years old, and this really gives me something to look forward to. I really hope I live long enough to see it. Tokyo has everything you need, plus it's safe."

The awarding of the Games to Tokyo, the sprawling Japanese metropolis of 13 million people, is a welcome boost for the nation in the wake of the tsunami and nuclear disaster that laid waste to its northern Pacific coast two years ago.

But the Olympics will heighten global scrutiny of Japan's containment and cleanup efforts at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, about 155 miles north of Tokyo. Recent revelations of leaks of contaminated water from the site had cast a pall on Tokyo's bid in its final weeks.

The 2020 Games will also increase the pressure on Japan to put its public finances in order. Japan's government debt has grown to more than twice the size of its $6 trillion economy, in large part because of the costs of caring for the country's increasing elderly population. Tokyo's organizing committee has budgeted the Olympics at around $10 billion, including the cost of constructing venues and improving transport infrastructure.

"The 2020 Olympics will represent the rejuvenation of Japan after the haunting disaster," said Ken Ruoff, director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Portland State University.

He added, "The main challenge, in addition to allaying fears about contamination from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, may be justifying the expense at a time when Japan has already set new records for deficit spending."

Still, the Olympics could not come to the Japanese capital at a more opportune time. Tokyo last hosted the Summer Games in 1964, signaling its dramatic transformation into a modern city from the ashes of World War II. In the half-century since, Japan surged onto the world stage as a global economic powerhouse, only to see growth stall in what has come to be called Japan's two lost decades.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power late last year, and unleashed bold monetary and government reforms to jump-start the economy, Japan has gone from a global economic laggard to the fastest-growing country among the Group of 7 nations. Winning the 2020 Games is expected to further bolster the standing of the popular Abe, who flew to Buenos Aires to lead Tokyo's final pitch to the IOC.

Economists at Nomura, the Japanese investment bank, said they expected the 2020 Olympics to add about $14 billion to Japan's economy - less as a percentage of gross domestic product than the boost the country got from its previous three Olympic Games: the Summer Games in Tokyo in 1964, and the Winter Games in Sapporo in 1972 and in Nagano in 1998.

Tokyo's bid centered on the vision of a "compact Olympics" that will reuse some of the venues that remain from 1964 and keep new investment to a minimum.

That said, hosting the Olympic Games could bring a wide range of other benefits, including restoring Tokyo's social standing - which could eventually feed into the Japanese economy, Hiromichi Tamura and his colleagues at Nomura said in a research note. News of the games will also go a long way to brightening the mood here and sparking more consumer confidence and spending, a missing part of the puzzle in Japan's economic recovery so far, they said.

"If the government's growth strategies go according to plan, the benefits should be obvious to everyone" by 2020, they said. "In the same way that the 1964 Tokyo Olympics showed that Japan had entered the ranks of modern industrialized nations, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics could show that Japan is back."

But not everybody is celebrating.

"He continues to ignore the severe problems at Fukushima," Kazuko Nihei, 37, a housewife and Fukushima refugee who now lives in Tokyo and was quoted on the local Tokyo Shimbun website. "They are taking us for fools."

Earlier, in Buenos Aires, where the Olympic vote was announced, Abe appeared to play down the issue. He said the government had a comprehensive cleanup plan in place. "The bottom line is that there is absolutely no problem," he said. "Please look at the facts, not newspaper headlines."

The Japanese news media seemed to have more frivolous concerns.

"English is going to be necessary around town," a young newscaster gushed on the Tokyo Broadcasting System. "Let's start learning English. You may be asked for directions on the streets."

© 2013 New York Times News Service