Japan is known for its consensus-based government. However, the decision to go ahead with the Tokyo Olympics, which had been postponed due to the pandemic, has shattered it. On the one hand, the Japanese public is concerned about the coronavirus, even though just 16 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. On the other hand, politicians are hoping to save face by hosting the Games, as well as the International Olympic Committee, which is risking billions of money.
“We’ve been pushed to the point where we can’t even stop now. In a recent editorial published by the Kyodo news agency, Kaori Yamaguchi, a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee and a bronze medalist in judo in 1988, stated, “We are doomed if we do, and damned if we don’t. The IOC also appears to believe that Japanese public opinion is unimportant.”
There appears to be a divide in support for moving forward, and there is consistent opposition. Concerns about health dangers are at the root of most of this anxiety. Although the government is now ramping up its immunization campaign after a sluggish start, the vast majority of the populace will still be unvaccinated when the Games begin in two weeks.
As a result, the IOC and the Japanese government have gone to great lengths to pull this off. The government’s chief COVID-19 consultant, Dr. Shigeru Omi, declared it “strange” to hold the world’s largest sporting event during a pandemic. The declared cost of the Tokyo Olympics is $15.4 billion, but government audits indicate that it is more than twice that amount. Except for $6.7 billion, it’s all taxpayer money. The IOC contributes just roughly $1.5 billion to the total expenditure, with some of the contributions being in-kind rather than monetary.
The IOC, based in Switzerland, is under financial pressure to hold the Olympics, as it is a nonprofit but highly commercial organization that gets 91 percent of its revenue from broadcast rights and sponsorship. According to estimates, a cancellation might lose the company $3 billion to $4 billion in broadcast rights revenue. Aside from the financial implications, staging a successful Olympics is also a source of national pride for the host country. It’s been compared by some economists as holding a big celebration. You overpay in the hopes that your guests will rave about your hospitality.
Putting on a successful Olympics is a big deal to Japan. “It’s a bit like a gambler who already has lost too much,” said Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo. “Pulling out of it now will only confirm the huge losses made, but carrying on you can still cling to the hope of winning big and taking it all back.”
