On November 16, the chief of the International Olympics Committee, Thomas Bach, arrived in Japan for a four-day trip. Meeting with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, the two discussed the ongoing preparation for the Olympic Games, currently rescheduled for next summer, determined to hold the games in spite of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“In this meeting, we were totally aligned in the full determination and confidence to make the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 and the Paralympic Games a great success next summer here in Tokyo,” Bach told reporters. Even in light of surging infections in Japan, Suga said that he is “determined” to host the Summer Games as “proof that humanity has defeated the virus.”
But not all in Tokyo and Japan agree. Bach was met by determined anti-Olympics protests the moment he touched in Tokyo. Marchers of diverse ages and backgrounds have been holding protests for months and years, asking the government repeatedly to cancel the Olympics. Chants range from “Protect lives!” and “Not delay, cancellation!”; colorful signs and banners read “Protect your life from the Olympics!” and “Don’t forget Fukushima!”
Polling shows that more than half of Tokyo residents believe that the Games should be further postponed or canceled altogether. By far the largest concern is the coronavirus: even among those who want to see the Olympics held, more than half think that the event should be staged without spectators.
But many activists have been fighting against the Olympics since well before the outbreak of COVID-19. And not just the Tokyo Olympics—these activists believe that the Olympics should not exist at all.
“A Waste”
“Only a few corporations earn huge profits off of the Olympics,” Otomi, an activist campaigning to cancel the Tokyo Olympics, told me. “Most people get nothing. Meanwhile, the economic downturn thanks to coronavirus has left people unemployed and their children hungry.”
18-32 billion US dollars. Nearly 3.5 trillion yen. That’s the approximate total cost of the Tokyo Olympics—a burden that falls largely on Tokyo taxpayers. Click To TweetTo activists, the math is simple: more money going into the Olympics means less money elsewhere. They argue that hosting the Olympics amounts to a massive transfer of wealth from the government into the hands of the few mega-corporations that profit off of government contracts, wealth that could and should be invested in social programs that help the most vulnerable members of society.
“The Olympics waste a massive amount of money,” a representative of No Thanks Olympics, a Tokyo-based organization, told me. The representative pointed me to lingering costs from and the difficult aftermath of the 1998 Nagano Winter Games as an example. Meanwhile, the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics has been plagued with charges of bribery, over-budget construction sites, and the degradation of the environment.
Another Tokyo-based anti-Olympics organization, Hangorin no Kai, released a fact-sheet of 11 reasons to oppose the Tokyo Olympics. Reasons range from the expulsion of the homeless and gentrification to the dangerous working conditions faced by construction workers.
The mission resonates beyond Tokyo. In fact, a whole cohort of global anti-Olympics activists has put their voices behind this message. “The Olympics accelerate displacement, militarization, and the erosion of democracy around the world,” reads the mission statement of NOlympics LA, the anti-Olympics organization campaigning to cancel the summer Olympics in LA in 2028. International activists from all over visited Tokyo last summer to share stories, build a community, and collectively protest.
That the Olympic Games are a fundamental ill is a powerful and unexpected message. Here’s what experts say about activists’ claims, and why Japanese activists aren’t giving up on a canceled Tokyo Games.
It Starts With a Tsunami
“Entering Fukushima, the tour begins on the side of the road. Just off the highway we see an open field where piles of toxic soil have sat in bags for months. Bulldozers sit idly by. As we continue driving throughout the day we see more and more fields with mountains of black plastic bags.”
This diary entry from an American activist’s visit to Japan to meet with other anti-Olympics activists details the radioactive destruction left in the wake of the 2011 disaster and nuclear meltdown. The diary describes a local museum’s efforts to promote the image of a complete clean-up. Meanwhile, in real-time, radiation hotspots were found near the Fukushima Olympic site. The activist could see high-levels of radiation reading on their own radiation meter.
The Japanese anti-Olympics movement is inextricably intertwined with Japan’s incomplete effort to recover Tohoku. No Thanks Olympics first launched shortly after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared that Fukushima was under control, late in 2016.
The 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and corresponding nuclear meltdown resulted in nearly 16,000 deaths and created over 300,000 refugees. One of the Japanese activists’ main talking points is that the government didn’t do nearly enough to help the affected. Instead, it has invested trillions of yen in a sporting event.
For years after the disaster, tens of thousands of refugees struggled to get new housing. Even in recent years, they have continued to live under the threat of homelessness in cramped, emergency dwellings. Many families are still struggling to pick up the pieces.
“Radioactive contamination is still spreading,” said Otomi. “The government initially announced the Tokyo Games as the ‘Olympics for rebuilding’ Japan from the 2011 earthquake, but this is obviously not true. Reconstruction has been delayed. The government thinks that the Olympics will make people forget about the accident.”
Aren’t Olympics Good for Cities?
Two of the primary theoretical bets involved for Olympic host cities are the hopes that investments in colossal infrastructure will pay off, and that catering to foreign tourists for the Games will help boost a new global reputation.
In practice, these bets have turned up a mixed bag of results. While Sydney’s 2000 Olympic Games were viewed as a huge success and had a positive impact on the city’s reputation, they had a lasting negative impact on the economy. London pulled a profit with the 2012 Olympics and inspired a lasting rise in volunteerism. In Beijing, 5 million residents were evicted from their homes for the 2008 Games; massive buildings in Rio de Janeiro crumble with neglect as crime surges post-Olympics. Some economists view the 2004 Athens Olympics as the starting point of Greece’s financial and economic derailing.
"The government thinks that the Olympics will make people forget about the [Fukushima nuclear] accident.” Click To TweetA pure cost-benefit analysis makes the Olympics only economically worth it for highly developed cities—like Tokyo. You can count the number of cities that have walked out of the Olympics with a surplus on one hand. While that was on the table for Tokyo in the past, the additional $6 billion cost of the games’ postponement due to COVID-19 makes it all but an impossibility.
“The games bring a lot of issues for local residents, a lot of conflict and controversy,” said Harry Hiller, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary who studies the impacts of the Olympic Games on host cities. “It requires a tremendous mobilization of local people—everything from municipal departments to civic departments, corporations, and schools.”
Japanese activists have taken issue with some of these details of Tokyo’s mobilization. An unreasonably fast construction schedule for the new National Stadium in a brutal heatwave resulted in the death of a construction worker. 300 families were evicted from their homes to build an Olympic construction site in 2013, and homeless people were expelled from Meiji Park in 2016. Activists also point out that Japan is mandating that the importance of the Olympics be taught in schools, which they argue amounts to propaganda.
New infrastructure, if used properly, is one clear upside. The Tokyo Olympics committee has already opened a number of venues like the Tokyo Aquatics Center and the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium for public use.
Another unquestionably positive outcome of the Olympics is that the games themselves have an impact on local resident’s attitudes. “There’s something about the magic of the games,” said Hiller. “The relaxation of normal urban routines, live-sites where people can watch on big screens. Reflections post-Olympics are always more positive than what residents are thinking pre-Olympics.”
Determined Activists
You can count the number of cities that have walked out of the Olympics with a surplus on one hand. Click To TweetLeading concerns about the Tokyo Olympics include the fact that they are held during the hottest part of the Japanese summer, putting the health of athletes, spectators, and volunteers at risk.
“In the Tokyo Olympic candidate file from the initial planning process, the Tokyo government claimed that the weather is ‘mostly sunny and temperate,’” said a representative for No Thanks Olympics. “This is a malicious lie.” (The average high from July 22 – August 9 over the last four years in Tokyo has been over 30 degrees Celsius.)
Meanwhile, the Olympic Village will become apartments that sell at 55 to more than 150 million yen per unit (~500,000 to 1.5 million USD), contributing to gentrification and displacement.
Organizations such as No Thanks Olympics and Hangorin no Kai protest in front of Tokyo Station regularly. They have no intention of stopping. Host cities have successfully resisted the Olympics before. A group of activists in Denver managed to undo the 1976 Olympic bid by building up political support for environmental and taxation concerns.
No Thanks Olympics’ close-knit meetings feature Tokyoites of diverse ages and backgrounds planning strategy, sharing stories, and expressing solidarity with the global movement. If the Tokyo Olympics is in fact held, local organizers promise to turn their attention to collaborating with global activists to stop future Olympics—Beijing in 2022, Paris in 2024, Los Angeles in 2028.
“We don’t think any of these Olympics should happen,” Miyazaki, a founding member of No Thanks Olympics, told me.
Miyazaki was previously involved in organizing opposition to Japan’s 2013 law that created the “My Number” system. The law assigns a number to all citizens and residents to simplify tax and pension issues, but some saw it as an excuse for the government to control more citizen data, putting citizen data at risk of security breaches. To Miyazaki, No Thanks Olympics’ corresponding opposition to Olympic security measures that have allowed the police to keep tabs on citizen data became a relevant cause.
Miyazaki said that the group’s biggest hurdle is getting their message to resonate with ordinary people. Most in Japan assume that the Olympics is inherently good and that anyone protesting it must be touched.
“Society sees us as crazy,” Miyazaki said. “It’s a challenge to communicate with people when they assume that we don’t have a good point.”
"We’re exercising our rights as citizens, but the atmosphere in Japan makes it hard to challenge the status quo." Click To TweetMiyazaki’s other biggest concerns about the Tokyo Olympics are the spiraling costs and excessive nationalism caused by pitting nation against nation. But none of this matters if fellow citizens refuse to hear his message. Miyazaki told me that he believes it is a cultural problem in Japan where many in society refuse to listen to dissent. “We’re exercising our rights as citizens, but the atmosphere in Japan makes it hard to challenge the status quo,” Miyazaki said.
Because of coronavirus, the tune has changed for some. The Nikkei Asian Review even published an article saying a canceled Olympics would be good for Japan’s economy. “More people have started listening to us,” Miyazaki said. “The fact that our society is valuing the Olympics over human lives has started to come through to people.”
Many experts agree. “In this time of superficial political schism and deepening biological crisis, COVID-19 ironically unites us all regardless of nationality,” said John Vrooman, professor at Vanderbilt University in sports economics. “Tokyo was originally chosen as the 2020 Olympics host city as a ‘safe pair of hands.’ If this is true, then it is time to be safe and cancel the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The Olympic Games are not ‘too big to fail.’”
“We are artists who believe that we have a responsibility to address the issues of contemporary society,” said Otomi. “That is why we declare that the Olympics must be canceled.”
