Why now?
-Two weeks ago, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Group of Seven leaders had agreed to support a “complete” Olympics. And the government remained silence for coming week while the COVID-19 cases gradually increased nation widely. He did not respond to the questions on the postponement.
Reuters reported that he dodged questions about whether any of the leaders had brought up the possibility of postponement. That is true to say the postponement is good for the health of the athletes due to the Coronavirus outbreak on the global scale.
Both Tokyo and Japanese Olympic Committee established a point when the city was chosen for it. That is “Athlete first. “ As I kept saying the olympic should be held next year for all good to athletes since the outbreak of the virus. This late decision of the postponement was resulted from the hypocrisy of the committees.
Obviously, there are many ugly fights behind the committees. For example, Tokyo’s chief governor Koike showed dissatisfaction towards the International Olympic Committee(IOC) when IOC decided to relocate the marathon’s sport ground to Hokkaido from Tokyo due to the severe heat in the summer of Tokyo. People already got tickets for the preview disappointed and the huge money was mended from fundings.
During this political show, COVID-19 increased the number of cases nearly a half million in the world. WHO called the spreads as pandemic and people took this virus as a threat to the human being. I didn’t see what’s the point of the Olympic at that stage. One of a survey showed the result that majority of Japanese people agreed to postpone or cancel the olympic.
Even before the official announcement from the Japanese government, we, from the western point of view, knew it’s not gonna happen this year. It was obvious. However, the PM Abe used the uncertain word “complete” Olympics neither saying cancel nor postpone.
I can clearly see the problem of its language which carries out many misinformation by its-self. At the age of the digital disruption such as fake news, can Japanese people get informed properly? The key is the traditional media’s role, I suppose.
Fortunately, we haven’t see the vital decrease of traditional media outlets such as newspaper unlike the western medias. But, it will happen. The former chief of the Buzzfeed Japan, Daisuke Furuta pointed out the declining of the revenue in Newspaper industries in Japan, Huffpost reported. “The revenue from Newspaper is clearly dropping.” said, Daisuke.
Last weekend, both the Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and the Chief of Tokyo, Eiko Koike announced the voluntary restrain ”JISHUKU” last weekend while Tokyo recorded the highest number of the cases following Tuesday.
This government’s action is squeezing the neck of entertainment industries. One of my friend told me his web magazine lost more than half of its revenue due to the cancellation of events.
Following the principal, further restriction cause deeper the damage in economy. The government’s responsibility on supporting businesses was not stated by the politicians, journalists and Japanese people. Those exploited people are the consequence of the ignorance.
