Cancel Games, says Asahi daily
Print Edition
Japanese newspaper publisher Asahi Shimbun, an official partner of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, called for the Summer Games to be cancelled in an editorial yesterday, citing risks to public safety and strains on the medical system from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several polls have shown the majority of the public is opposed to holding the Games this summer, concerned about tens of thousands of athletes and officials descending on a country where vaccinations have proceeded slowly.
Doctors’ associations have protested holding the Games, investors have talked up the benefits of shelving them, and maverick businessmen like Masayoshi Son have called for cancelling the Games.
“We ask Prime Minister (Yoshihide) Suga to calmly and objectively assess the situation and decide on the cancellation of the event this summer,” said the paper, a left-leaning daily often critical of Suga’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
“We are far from a situation in which everybody can be confident they will be ‘safe and secure’,” the paper added, invoking the government mantra about the Games.
In a statement later in the day, the Asahi Shimbun said it remained committed to being an official partner of the Tokyo 2020 Games and that its editorial division had its independent mission.
The company would “continue its activities as an official partner while monitoring the COVID-19 situation,” the statement said.
Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto shrugged off the editorial, saying that “it is only natural for all sorts of media organizations to have all sorts of opinions” about the issue, at a news briefing yesterday evening following a Tokyo 2020 executive board meeting.
He said the board did not discuss the possibility of a cancellation or postponement, instead discussing the importance of communicating how safe the Olympics would be to the public.
Olympic organizers have insisted that the Games can go ahead as planned.
Speaking ahead of the board meeting, Tokyo 2020 President Seiko Hashimoto said only one coach tested positive for coronavirus over the course of four test events with almost 7,000 visitors from some 50 countries. The events “are evidence that our current coronavirus precautions are effective,” she said.
“Even baseball matches are being held currently with spectators. Why not go ahead with the Games?,” Kozo Yamamoto, a heavyweight politician of the ruling LDP, said.
Although Japan has been spared the coronavirus ravages of overseas nations, it has struggled to control a fourth wave of infections across the country.
Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike said yesterday she will ask that the current state of emergency, originally set to be lifted at the end of May, to be extended for “about another month,” mere weeks before the Games are set to start on July 23.
Just over 5 percent of the population has received vaccinations, and Japan has recorded about 719,000 infections and 12,394 deaths.
The United States on Monday issued an advisory against travel to Japan, but Japanese officials said it would not affect the Games, and the White House said on Tuesday that it stood by the decision to hold the Games as planned.
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