Shunichiro Okano

He coached the national football team from 1961 to 1971, becoming the head coach for the 1970-1971 season. From 1998 to 2002 he served as the president of the Japan Football Association. Okano was a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1990 to 2012, becoming an honorary member in 2012.

Okano's parents ran a well-established confectionery shop in Tokyo’s Ueno district. During the war his family escaped from the American air raids to Gunma Prefecture, but Okano stayed to attend a high school. In April 1949 he enrolled to the University of Tokyo and joined a football club there. In 1953 his team won the first national university championships. In March 1957, Okano graduated in psychology from the Faculty of Letters, and in early 1961 spent three months in West Germany to train as a football coach. Upon return he was appointed as a national coach, while he was also registered as a player for Football at the 1968 Summer Olympics, in which tournament Japan national football team won the bronze medals, then in 1970 was promoted to the head coach. In October 1974 he joined the Japan Football Association. Soon after that he became executive director of the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC); in 1977 he was appointed as its general secretary and in 1989 as its executive director. In September 1990 he became a member of the IOC, and in 1995 of the FIFA Olympic Tournaments' Organizing Committee.

Okano died from lung cancer on 2 February 2017 at a Tokyo hospital. He was 85.

• Blue Ribbon Medal of Honour (1990)
• IOC Silver Pin (1998)
• Blue Dragon Award (South Korea) (2003)
• The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon (2004)
• Japan Football Hall of Fame (2005)
• Honorary member of the International Olympic Committee (2012 - 2017)