Keirin, meaning “racing wheels”, is a track cycling event that originated in Japan in 1948 and gained Olympic status at the 2000 Sydney games.
The sport was born from the aftermath of the second world war, when Japan’s economy was at an all time low and the country was recovering from the ravages of war.
Who Soc'd It?
"The government also licensed the sport for gambling as a means of enticing more money out of it’s citizens to contribute towards Japan’s post-war reconstruction."
...and there was a good deal of debate about how and who had paid/bribed it into the Olympic fold.
Like pro-wrestling, and the Rikidozan phenomenon, sport was used as a tool for mass-marketing in the post-war period. Mitsubishi, the yakuza, the fledgling LDP... all conspired to make Japanese-American wrestling bouts the subject of massive hype. It sold a lot of TV sets, made some seriously dodgy people millionaires and set the LDP up with a lot of clout and funding.
It's really pretty amazing how much of a phenomenon it became after the war -- thousands of people would gather outside stations around make-shift TVs smaller than what most people have in their living rooms today to watch Rikidozan take on American wrestlers. And when he won, there'd usually be a number of fatalities caused by people working themselves up to the point of cardiac arrest, or falling off of whatever perch they had climbed to get a better view of the TV while celebrating.
The Rikidozan parts of the book are fascinating but he was an unfortunate character - I'd think it would be hard to make your name on the basis of being "the best" and the nations champion over it's new oppressors but know that the opposition was paid to lose.