Looks like the games ain't happening

Earlier this week, the all-powerful, Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s No 1 newspaper by far, ran a damning editorial on the Tokyo Olympics demanding “that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga evaluate the situation calmly and objectively, and decide against holding the Olympics and Paralympics this summer”.

Masayoshi Son, head of tech investment behemoth, SoftBank tweeted last weekend, “Do the IOC have the right to decide if it’s held or not?” He added, “If you think about what people have to put up with, we might have a lot more to lose if the games go ahead.” Earlier, Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of e-commerce giant Rakuten had openly come out in opposition to the Games, calling them a “suicide mission.” The risk is too big, he said. Tokyo 2020 chief Seiko Hashimoto acknowledged that organisers face “considerable” opposition.

A nationwide survey in Japan, conducted between May 7 and 9, by the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun, showed 59 per cent wanted the Games cancelled as opposed to 39 per cent who said they should be held. “Postponement”— an option ruled out by the IOC — was therefore not offered as a choice. Of those who said the Olympics should go ahead, 23 per cent said they should take place without spectators. Foreign spectators have in any case been banned but a final decision on domestic attendance will be made in June.

The Asahi Shimbun’s own survey, conducted by telephone, found 83 per cent of respondents said the Tokyo Olympics should be postponed or scrapped. Broken down further, 43 per cent said the games should be “canceled,” and 40 per cent said they should be “postponed again.” Only 14 per cent said the Tokyo Olympics should be held this summer. In addition, 73 per cent of respondents said they were “unconvinced” by Prime Minister Suga's repeated assurances that it is possible to hold the games safely.

While no prominent athlete has publicly opposed the Games being held this summer, the Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka said the time had come to discuss the merits of holding the event in the middle of a pandemic. The world No 2 said staging the Games should be discussed as long as the issue was “making people very uncomfortable”.

The US State Department has meanwhile issued the highest travel advisory for Japan due to “very high” levels of Covid-19 in the country. The Level 4 advisory announcement comes less than two months before the scheduled July 23 opening ceremony for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. Last month, Japan declared its third state of emergency due to Covid-19. The extended state of emergency is set to expire on May 31, but officials are warning that the situation is still not under control. Only 4.4 per cent of Japan’s population has received at least one vaccine dose, making it the slowest vaccination rate among the world’s wealthiest countries. It looks like the Games ain’t happening.

The 1964 summer Olympic Games were Japan's great return to the world stage after its defeat and destruction two decades earlier in World War II. The first Games ever held in Asia were also a chance to trumpet the rebuilding of post-war Tokyo and the country’s emergence as a high-tech giant with the infrastructure to match. That included the first of its high-speed shinkansen “bullet trains” that would come to epitomise modern Japan. With Tokyo 2020, Japan wanted to reprise the glory of the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games and lift the national spirit and hoped to jolt a moribund economy. Alas, that is increasingly looking like a distant dream.

The Olympics in Tokyo were going to cost Japan about $25 billion. All but $6.7 billion of this money is public money. The 14 Worldwide Olympic Partners — Airbnb, Alibaba, Atos, Bridgestone, Coca Cola, Dow Chemicals, General Electric, Intel, Omega, Panasonic, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, Toyota and Visa were to bring in about  $1.3 billion. The 15 “Golden Partners” signed by TOCOG locally in Japan including Asahi, Canon, Fujitsu, NEC and Tokio Marine, the 33 “Official Partners” … including All Nippon Airways, Cisco Systems, Kikkoman, Nissin Foods and Toto, and the 19 “Official Sponsors and Suppliers’ like Alphabet, Boston Consulting Group, Ernst & Young have committed $3.3 billion. This is at least twice — perhaps three times — as large as any previous Olympics. It is a tribute indeed to Japanese nationalism that not one of the 68 sponsors committed to the Tokyo Games has backed out, or whimpered on the escalation of costs and contributions. Not even after all the negativism of the past few weeks, and increasing number of “nay” sayers. For Japanese business, the Tokyo Games are a national cause and go beyond discussions of profit or benefit.

The biggest downer of the cancellation of the games will be for the athletes. Many of them would be well past their prime, and peak, by the time the Paris Olympics happen in 2024. That, more than any other loss, is the saddest. And most heart-rending. Que Sera Sera!

The writer is MD of Rediffusion