Land Of the Setting Sun

You knew this was going to happen.

The organizing committee for the 2020 - oops, 2021 - Tokyo Olympics just announced that, due to a COVID emergency in Japan, no Japanese spectators will be allowed at any of the venues for the events.  The surge of the virus has just gotten too much out of hand, and most Japanese people remain unvaccinated.  Therefore, there will be no spectators whatsoever.

And how did that happen?  How can a country famous for its exacting manufacturing standards, a country so obsessed with punctuality it times the trains on its national railway system down to the nanosecond, and a country with so much grit and tenacity that they were a bitch to defeat in the Second World War (even the geisha girls were ready for hand-to-hand mortal combat in the event of an Allied invasion) fail to get COVID under control?  They once controlled the whole damn Pacific Ocean but they can't get a hold on this virus?

Be that as it may, the Games will go on, but watching them on TV will feel more like watching a documentary on athletic practice sessions than watching actual competition.  It must be noted that other countries have managed to hold sporting events with spectators with relative ease since the global vaccine rollout started.  If other countries can pull that off, why can't Japan?

Tokyo got the 2020 Olympics by default, you will recall, because only two other cities wanted them and probably couldn't afford it; other cities had already decided not to bid for the Games because they knew they couldn't afford them.  At this point, with the Games having been delayed a year, there are now calls for the Tokyo Olympics to be postponed again, or canceled altogether, mainly by the Japanese people themselves.  But the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is going full steam ahead to hold these Games for reasons that boil down to money, because delaying them until 2022 (and now we have medical experts saying we could still be dealing with a global pandemic when Paris is scheduled to hold the Summer Olympics in 2024!) or canceling them altogether would lose more money for the IOC than having them now.  The princes, presidents and potentates who run the IOC also want the show to go on because they're only concerned with indulging in the good life of exotic travel and personal perks - and keeping the Olympics going allows them to keep all of those fringe benefits.  Because it's not about the athletes, even though it's supposed to be.  Incidentally, the athletes have to quarantine themselves from each other and can't go out and enjoy the city while in Tokyo because of the virus - one more reason to try for next year rather than now.

Alas, the Japanese people can't stop the Olympics, no matter how much they want to.  Only one Japanese person was ever able to stop the Summer Olympics.

And he did it twice.  The first time, in 1940, the Olympics were scheduled to be held in . . . Tokyo.  He also stopped the Winter Olympics twice.  (And the 1940 Winter Games were going to be held in Sapporo.)

Oh yeah, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics are expected to be held under similar restrictions.  To think they could have been held in Almaty, Kazakhstan instead.  Kazakhstan?  Only half a million cases since the pandemic started.  China?  The Chinese won't even level with us regarding how many COVID cases there are.

As for Tokyo . . . Sha'Carri Richardson, you're not going to miss much.