There will be material things, such as a transformed waterfront in Tokyo Bay, and 11 new venues are being constructed. Most notably – although not as notably as originally planned – a new national stadium is being built on the site of the old one.

Another aspiration of the Tokyo 2020 organisers is symbolism. 

They want the impending event to be characterised as the "recovery and reconstruction Games" following the Tohoku disaster in 2011 when an earthquake and tsunami led to more than 15,000 deaths and a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

"Baseball and softball matches will be held in the disaster-affected areas," said Masa Takaya, spokesman for the Tokyo 2020 organisers in June this year. "And restore vitality through the power of sport."

There will also be what Tokyo 2020 organisers describe as a "softer legacy" – harder to create, harder to measure and of profound value. They see the Games as being "a catalyst for social change".

That change will, it is hoped, manifest itself particularly in the creation of a more open attitude in Japanese society towards the rest of the world, and specifically a new attitude to the requirements, and potential, of people with disabilities.

Last month, in marking the 500 days to go date before the Paralympics, Andrew Parsons, President of the International Paralympic Committee, told me: "With every edition of the Games we have a different vision from the host city, a different picture of what they want to achieve.

"In Rio, the main focus was on the legacy of an accessible transport system.

"In Tokyo, because we don't have that need to the same level, we are focusing more on changing people's perceptions."

With just over a year to go, Parsons was warming to his theme.

"The lack of accessible rooms is a symptom," he said. "In Japanese society they don't see disabled people travelling, either for pleasure or for business. So they don't understand why they would need an accessible hotel room if they don't travel.

"Why have a hotel room if these people should stay at home? They are not business travellers because they are not in the workplace. They stay at home, so they don't go to a beach, they don't go to resorts or tourist spots.

"It is a part of the culture, and that is a challenge. We want to change that culture."

That is a bold and challenging aspiration, and if anything can achieve such a result, it is an Olympic and Paralympic Games.

But no matter how many of the goals on the Tokyo 2020 legacy wish-list are ticked, the level of change, and legacy, will not remotely reach that brought about by Tokyo's hosting of the 1964 Olympics.

The Tokyo 2020 Games vision itself appears to acknowledge this, as it states: "Sport has the power to change the world and our future. The Tokyo 1964 Games completely transformed Japan. The Tokyo 2020 Games will bring positive reform to the world."

Since the start of the modern Olympics, there have been some Games that have actively changed the Olympic Movement rather than the other way round. 

The London 1948 Games, for instance, left no ringing legacy for the home nation save for the knowledge that, had they not volunteered to be the first hosts after the Second World War, the Olympics might have foundered.

Thirty-six-years on, you could argue that the Los Angeles 1984 Games offered the Olympic Movement its template for financial salvation after the desperate years around Montreal's staging in 1976, and the opaque financial arrangements that will have ensured the working in Moscow in 1980.

But has there ever been a more transformational Games for a host nation than the ones which were staged in Tokyo less than 20 years after the Second World War? And was there ever a Games that left people with such a changed impression of its hosts?

When I was last in Tokyo – and indeed, when I was first in Tokyo – I met a research fellow of the city's University of Tsukuba, Satoshi Shimizu PhD. He spoke with passion about his hopes for Tokyo 2020, and about the changes wrought in 1964. He gave me a research paper he had recently written on the latter subject entitled, reasonably enough, "Tokyo and 1964 Tokyo Olympics".

It offers a series of perspectives, from academics, from ordinary citizens, on how and what those Games meant to the city, and the country.

The paper outlines the "massive infrastructure reforms" across the Tokyo metropolitan region, "such as construction of the bullet train, Shinkansen, and major improvements in roads, highways, water supply, drainage and water disposal". 

Tokyo, it is said, was transformed into "a clean and hygienic city" and all of these changes were a visible register of the country's "rapid economic growth".

At the time Japan won the right to stage the Games, in 1959, the lack of flush toilets in its capital city meant most waste had to be vacuumed daily out of cesspits underneath buildings.

Shimizu cites the 2006 testimony of Nakade Kazuo, who lived at the time near Yoyogi Park, chosen as one of the Tokyo 1964 sites. It was known as "Washington Heights" because it had been used for housing US armed forces after the war.

Writing in the Asahi Shimbun paper, Kazuo writes: "In June 1964, a letter from the Shibuya Ward Office was delivered to my house near Washington Heights, informing us that 'the Shibuya Ward Office is ready to make a loan to me to change my privy to a flush toilet'.

"I guessed the reason was that we Japanese should be ashamed of using a privy, especially if a foreigner happened to visit. I now realise that there was no possibility of a foreigner visiting my home."

Kazuo also recalled an incident later in the summer of 1964. "We had less rain," he said. 

"When I sprinkled water on my street in front of my house, a neighbour got angry with me, saying 'save water for the foreigners' as if he regarded me as an unpatriotic man."

Shimizu concludes: "His comments can be taken as a revealing example of a new type of nationalism, by which people infused daily lives with keen awareness that 'foreigners are coming.'"

The paper also quotes a section of an essay written in 1965 by the Governor of Tokyo, Ryutaro Azuma, who had headed the Japanese Olympic Committee as it sought and then delivered the Games.

Entitled "The Significance of Holding the Tokyo Olympics", it states: "One of the intangible legacies of Tokyo Olympics is that it gave Japanese people the opportunity to be united for the first time since World War Two.

"Additionally the Tokyo Olympics succeeded in playing a vital role in connecting the east and the west in terms of worldwide peace and sports. As a result 'the world began to show greater respect for Japan and its people.'"

In another 1965 piece written for the Tokyo Organising Committee, entitled "Looking Back at the Impressive Festival", Nobumasa Kawamoto wrote: "As time goes by, I feel that I have gradually come to understand the depth and real greatness of the Olympics. 

"These 15 days, from the brilliant Opening Ceremony through the impressive Closing Ceremony, fascinated people throughout Japan; they were something I would describe as '100 million people in ecstasy...'

"The Tokyo Olympics brought the world to Japan for the first time. Everybody could see the world in Japan, and found Japan in the world."

With the best will in the world, nothing the Tokyo 2020 Games delivers will match the social effect of the city's 1964 staging.