Japan’s “cursed” Olympics: going ahead, after all
It was a subdued occasion, with crowds discouraged and those who did turn out wearing face masks and socially distanced, said Francesca Regalado and Rurika Imahashi in Nikkei Asia (Tokyo). But after a pandemic-induced delay of a year, the torch relay for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo finally got under way last week – “officially starting the clock on Japan’s ill-fated summer Games”. Having set out from Fukushima, to honour the almost 20,000 left dead by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the torch will pass through 859 Japanese towns and cities in 121 days – arriving in Tokyo’s National Stadium for the Opening Ceremony on 23 July. Alas, the Games that follow will be unlike any we’ve seen before, said Tokyo Shimbun, after organisers announced a ban on foreign spectators due to Covid. It’s a huge blow: Japan will miss out on a much-needed economic boost, as well as the chance to welcome a million foreign visitors. It’s little wonder that many people are now asking: what’s the point of hosting the Games at all?
The Games should be cancelled – “now!”, said Dirk Adam in Focus (Munich). With many countries grappling with a third wave of Covid, it’s sheer lunacy to be planning an event where athletes from across the globe descend on one of the planet’s most densely populated cities. Most Japanese people agree, said William Pesek in the Asia Times (Hong Kong): 80% of them want the Games – which Taro Aso, Japan’s gaffe-prone finance minister, called the “cursed” Olympics – cancelled or postponed. Polls show that most people in other nations feel the same. Yet Japan’s government is determined to press on, hoping to partially fill stadiums with domestic fans. It’s a risky move: its reputation will take a big hit if the Games turn into a “super-spreader” event just as vaccines promise to end the pandemic.
How sad that it has come to this, said Motoko Rich and Hikari Hida in The New York Times. When Japan pitched to host the Games, organisers framed them as a “symbol of recovery” after a lengthy economic slump and the Fukushima disaster. Instead, they’ve become a nightmare. The Olympic budget has swollen to a record £11.2bn, increasing by £2bn in the past year alone. And Tokyo’s organising committee has been “swamped by leadership chaos”, with its president and creative director resigning in the past month after making sexist remarks. Yet thanks to a mix of financial pressure and “national pride”, the Games are set to go ahead anyway. Now the event “threatens to become a trial from which Japan may take years to recover”.