Category Archives: Tokyo

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Olympic suicide squeeze

Japan is not at war, but one wouldn’t know it to hear the words coming out of the International Olympic Committee that the Olympics will go forward regardless of the state of emergency in Tokyo and that sacrifices need to be made.

1940 all over again

Japan is pressing forward with the Olympics in a way that would have made the 1940 leaders of Japan’s Imperial Army and Imperial Navy shudder in recognition of their historic dilemma then when committing to an un-winnable war with the United States because backing out was politically awkward.

Holding past Olympics has proven catastrophic for some countries that became saddled with huge debt.

These Olympics are poised to set a new level on the kind of catastrophe the Olympics can bring. Japan’s government, in its desire to put a good face on this shit show, have said that canceling is beyond its power and that only the IOC can pull the plug, which no one actually believes but which is on par with most of the nonsense that’s been spewed about this travesty since before Tokyo “won” them in 2013.

‘Suicide mission’

Regardless of what’s in Tokyo’s contract with the IOC, the games can’t go forward without Japan’s cooperation, withdraw that cooperation, and the country can set aside tickets, volunteers, venue security, medals, health care and transportation for visiting athletes and officials, but can instead focus on Japan’s own health security.

Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder of the Rakuten Group, has called the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics “a suicide mission,” but this mission has little in common with those Japan is historically infamous for. In the closing stages of World War II, when defeat was inevitable and surrendering “awkward,” Japanese soldiers and sailors were ordered to fly bomb-laden aircraft or guide manned torpedoes into enemy ships, but this is different.

Japan, which has bungled its vaccination rollout, is now virtually condemning individuals to death and disease by diverting resources and energy to ensuring the Olympics going forward, but is not informing the people that they are being sacrificed, and is in fact denying it.

Instead, Japan’s government has done everything it could to downplay the toll of its drive to make sure the Olympics go off without a hitch. The government’s stance when the coronavirus struck could have been stated as: “this could be awkward, so let’s keep it from getting too far out of hand while not making too big a deal about it either in the hope it blows over.”

That didn’t work well in 2020. The delays in coordinating a real response–as opposed to the Tokyo Olympic PR response the government pursued–have impacted Japan from Day 1. People have literally died because testing and tracing were hindered by government reluctance to publish numbers that might make Japan look like a less suitable Olympic destination.

But through half-hearted action with an eye on how everything would play for Tokyo 2020, the world has come to realize exactly that: That Japan’s coronavirus response has become the joke of Asia.

The Olympics would be safer without fans in attendance, but for many in the government, including Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, and among organizers, that ship has now sailed, according to Kyodo News. The question is now how many can reasonably be crammed into venues.

Given the obvious bullshit coming from the government “We’ve never given the Olympics priority over the public,” Suga telling people fans will be in the stands, might as well come with the phrase: “Even if it kills them.”

No. The victims to be sacrificed in Japan’s Olympic suicide mission are not like the soldiers and sailors being ordered to their deaths in World War II, but more like their uncounted compatriots, civilians in Saipan and Okinawa whom the Imperial Army forced to commit suicide rather than risk capture.

If sacrifices are required, Japan has demonstrated it is not going to let death stand in the way of its Olympics.

Tokyo: Bring out your dead

This week, Tokyo Olympics took another step toward actually happening when the International Olympic Committee arranged to provide enough vaccine doses for every member of every national Olympic committee’s team.

The program will make it safer for athletes and staff to take part this summer, addressing the largest issue that stands in the way of Tokyo hosting the Olympics while a pandemic rages through the city. The one and only reason the Olympics were postponed 15 months ago was a threatened boycott by U.S. sports federations over safety concerns.

Without U.S. swimming and athletics, the TV money that forces the Olympics to take place in the summer months when Tokyo becomes a sauna, the IOC had no choice put to demand a postponement while allowing then prime minister Shinzo Abe to announce it was his idea — for the sake of the world.

But left to its own devices, Japan would not give away a summer Olympics the way it had the Tokyo 1940 games. Japan abandoned that project in 1949 because it was busy fighting a war on and establishing puppet states on the Asian continent. The government felt the resources spent promoting Olympic ideals would be better used subjugating eastern China and Manchuria.

But the money spent on the 2020 Olympics is already gone, and the graft already distributed. There is nothing left to hold them, and there is no question that regardless of how many bodies might have piled up in the streets of Tokyo last summer, Japan would have gone forward with the Olympics had the IOC not backed out.

We know that, because that is what we are seeing now with a vaccination effort a cynic might say is designed to allow Japan to have its Olympics whether its people want it or not, or whether its people survive it or not.

By promising to vaccinate everyone whose health might be put at risk through competing in Tokyo, the IOC hopes to prevent another potential boycott in a country, which is currently deemed to unsafe for IOC president Thomas Bach to visit as planned this month, can press forward.

The IOC has suggested the vaccination of Olympic athletes and coaches should not run counter to local government policy, but that is just eye-wash. Japan’s policy is to only vaccinate Olympians if it doesn’t interfere with vaccinating front-line health workers and the elderly.

Japan is behind schedule now and is not planning to vaccinate all its residents over 65 until the end of July — after the Olympics open. The doses it expects — enough to vaccinate roughly 2,500 Olympic and Paralympic athletes and coaches will arrive this month.

Not everyone in sports is happy with the optics of athletes and coaches receiving preferential treatment, but Japan and the IOC has prepared for that: “These doses will not interfere with Japan’s substandard incompetent vaccination program, because they are in addition to the ones Japan had done a bad job in procuring for individuals with higher priority.”

It’s like telling the poor that the additional billion dollars we’re giving to your wealthiest compatriots doesn’t affect you, because it is not coming from the money already earmarked for social welfare, but was given to us by the IOC.

It’s complete and utter bullshit, and so a perfect symbol for the Tokyo Olympics.

Perhaps if Japan asks nicely, the IOC will subsidize a program to allow Tokyo’s government to secretly clear the dead from the streets surrounding the Olympic village so as not to spoil the image of Tokyo 2020.

You may scoff, but what we’ve seen from Japan and the IOC so far suggests it’s possible.

This could be the scene around the Tokyo 2020 Olympic village.