All These Half-Nudes Are Fit to Print

Nudes on the lawns in Beverly Hills.

We all have our own Olympic memories. This one just happens to be Masaji Kiyokawa’s personal favorite. Nudes on the lawns in Beverly Hills. Hey, everybody has to remember something.

You go a long way, you come to a strange place, you are bound to find something unforgettable. (I did, here at Nagano’s opening ceremony, for instance. It isn’t every day I see a pack of 500-pound men plod into a stadium in mid-winter--not counting sportswriters at a Super Bowl--wearing nothing but their Huggies. Those poor frozen sumo beefcakes. I hope they didn’t have to check their shoes by the door.)

Masaji Kiyokawa, he is 85 now. He is an honorary member of the International Olympic Committee, and a former swimmer.

Seventy years ago . . . well, maybe I’ll let Masaji tell it:

“My first association with the Olympic movement goes way back to the year 1928. At those games [in Amsterdam], a Japanese swimmer named Yoshiuki Tsuruta won a gold medal in the 200-meter breaststroke event for men, the first gold medal ever won by a Japanese swimmer.

“This was a big surprise for me, 15 years of age and an unknown local high school swimmer. ‘Even a Japanese swimmer can win a gold medal in the Olympic Games!’ This motivated me to hope to represent my country in the next Games.

“Since there was no air service available between Tokyo and Los Angeles, we had to cross the Pacific by boat. The voyage took us 18 days, during which we swimmers could not practice.

“Anticipating this handicap, we were scheduled to stay 1 1/2 months in Los Angeles, prior to the Games, to recover our top swimming form.

“For the first time in the history of the modern Olympic Games, the organizing committee built an ideal Olympic village in Beverly Hills, in the outskirts of the city. Male athletes lived in about 550 independent cottages, each of which accommodated only four athletes. Female athletes were accommodated separately from the males, in the Chapman Park Hotel in the Wilshire District of Los Angeles.

“The whole area was covered with a beautiful green lawn, just like a huge green carpet. One early morning, I saw Paavo Nurmi, the famous distance runner from Finland, running naked and barefoot on the lawn, which was wet from the morning dew. Later, he was ousted from the village, over a dispute of his amateur status.

“Nearly all of the people working in the village were male, and some of the Scandinavians called it the ‘Stag Party Village,’ since they could sunbathe half nude on the green lawn in the afternoons, after their training.

“I have participated in 14 Games of the Olympiad, and visited all the villages of those Games, but for me, the one in Los Angeles remains the best.

“Everything was perfect and wonderful.”

And how did he do?

Masaji won the 100-meter backstroke.

And how did it feel?

“To my surprise, I remained calm the whole time,” at the 1932 medal ceremony in the L.A. Coliseum, he remembers.

“However, the next morning, when I opened the daily papers and saw photographs of myself on the front pages, all of a sudden I felt uncontrollable joy. I remembered Lord Byron’s famous line, ‘I woke up to find myself famous.’ ”

Our pleasure, Masaji. Always glad to help make our fellow man famous. Or, our fellow woman. As I viewed Nagano’s opening ceremony, I couldn’t help but be curious which memories everyone here would take home. The ringing of the temple bell? The lighting of the torch? Or, the spectacular entry of the huge half-nude dudes?

They love having naked festivals in Japan. (I didn’t know if you knew this, but it is my job as a reporter to cover every angle.) January in Japan is famous for being naked-festival month. The festivals are always held in the coldest time of year, because to brave the cold is to demonstrate “dedication, strength, stamina, will and spirit,” I am told, with no reference ever made to freezing your chopsticks off.

For some reason, naked festivals are only for men. (I personally feel this is one of the defining differences between the Japan and Beverly Hills cultures, and we should do more to bring our peoples together.) The men here wear white fundoshi, which is a gigantic G-string, available at popular prices at your finer Frederick’s of Nagano.

At the traditional January festivals, scantily clad men fortify themselves by drinking sake, then snake-dance through the streets, often carrying a small souvenir god. I am informed that several of these naked festivals are televised nationally. It is my first real indication that Japan is a subscriber to HBO.

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” was sung at Nagano’s opening ceremony, mainly by those who came dressed for it. (The others sang some other ode, trust me.)

In 1935, three years after Masaji, Paavo and our other tanned tourists left L.A., it seems that Mister Olympics himself, Baron Pierre de Coubertin--another guy who woke up one morning and found himself famous--made a speech in Germany, in which he happened to mention that “Ode to Joy” should be sung at the Games year after year after year. (I have petitioned the IOC many times to switch to “Roll Over, Beethoven” instead, but you know these stuffed shirts.)

The lyrics, in German, by the way, go like this:

Freude, Schoner Gotterfunken,

Tochter aus Elysium.

Wir betreten feuer-trunken,

Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!

I decided to sing it this way during Nagano’s ceremony, partly in honor of the baron, and partly because I do so enjoy singing Schoner Gotterfunken. It brings me uncontrollable joy. It makes me want to run naked on the lawn. It makes me think of my favorite singer-composers, Paul Schoner and Art Gotterfunken.

In 2000, an opening ceremony will be held in Sydney, Australia. I expect to see no extremely large half-nude wrestlers, but several festivals featuring extremely large cans of beer.

Then comes 2002, when a Winter Olympics will be held in Utah. I know Utah. There is no nudity in Utah. There is not even half-nudity in Utah. If you walk into a stadium half-nude in Utah, you better be there to play basketball.