As has been covered in this column a few times before, the hosting of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics has been an unusually complex and controversy-riddled affair for Japan. After last year's postponement of the event, the organising committee in Japan has faced the twin pressure of sponsors concerned with recouping the money they spent and a public that has gradually grown not only uninterested in the event but also outright opposed to holding it in the middle of a pandemic. To top it off, a few more unfortunate controversies popped out such as the resignation of the President of the organising committee Mori Yoshiro for his sexist comments. This incident created its mini-media storm that focussed its attention on the daily incidences of sexism in Japanese public life. None of this exactly made for the image of rebirth and change that Japan was aiming for as the central message of its Olympics campaign. Predictably, many started asking if there was anything worthwhile to be had in persisting with the Olympics in July 2021. Japan was not quite out of the COVID woods. The global vaccination campaign had only just started gaining some ground. Nevertheless, the Japanese government plodded on with the challenging task of erecting the world's largest bio-bubble to safely hold the Olympic games. As of now the full playbook which will define how the events will be held is still in the process of being developed with the final version being expected in June. The committee is keeping a close watch on Japan's case count and its vaccination campaign to determine just how controlled and restrictive the Olympics events would be, especially for its more social aspects. Japan has stated that it will not be welcoming any foreign spectators to Japan for the fear of creating a super-spreader event. But even without the spectators, the number of staffers being used for the events could run over 1,50,000. It is unclear just how Japan plans to keep a system to monitor and regulate interactions between thousands of individuals within its bio-bubble.
For now, the torch relay is already underway. The torch started its 120-day journey to the games in Fukushima. Fukushima fittingly celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster recently and the Olympic relay was meant to be a sign of hope that the prefecture and its devastated parts could and would be reborn once again. It was a subdued showing with empty roads and masked participants being asked to refrain from doing traditional shouts or cheers. Prominent Japanese athletes and celebrities have pulled out of participating in the event for one reason or another. Even Japanese PM Suga had to cancel his engagement with the event after claiming to have run into pressing parliamentary issues. To further rain on this parade on hope, the prefecture that was meant to be the next leg of the relay, Osaka declared a state of emergency after caseloads reached critical highs in recent weeks. While the decision was initially to keep the torch relay away from the main Osaka city, later the order was expanded to the whole prefecture when it was declared that the torch relay was banned from all public roads in Osaka. Recently, even Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said she was going to request the central government to put emergency measures in place to check the Covid surge in the capital region. Japan's vaccine minister Taro Kono is worried that Tokyo could very soon go the way of Osaka which is worrisome in the lead-up to the games as they will officially kick-off in the capital. Additionally, amid various countries reconsidering their participation and having difficulties organising and attending qualifier events, North Korea became the first country to formally pull out of the event on account of rising Covid numbers. And finally, there is the latest controversy on vaccines. Recently, the Kyodo news agency reported that Japan was considering prioritising Olympics athletes for vaccines over its own people. Japan presently has one of the slowest vaccine rollouts of any advanced economy with just around a million people inoculated. Currently, Japan is still going through the first tranche of recipients for the vaccine which includes medical workers and the elderly. The rest of the population is not expecting any vaccines until much later in the summer. Needless to say, news of this did not go down well on social media. There was outrage regarding the fact while the government could not guarantee the vaccination of all the elderly by June, it was going out of its way to vaccinate the athletes coming from abroad. While the government later refuted the Kyodo report, the damage was done. If Japanese people and organisations were uncertain regarding the games before, now they are more outrightly opposed. All in all, things don't look good for Tokyo 2020 and it seems unlikely that public perception will flip like magic when the event comes closer to its starting date in July.