Jul 10, 2021
On June 20, domestic and international media toured the Olympic and Paralympic Village where athletes will be housed during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. At one point, former J. League chairman and current “mayor” of the village, Saburo Kawabuchi, chided the assembled press, saying that they had talked about whether the games should proceed and that many Japanese people thought they shouldn’t, but at this point there was nothing to do but carry out the Olympics as planned. The games, he said, were not just for the Japanese people, but also something “Japan has promised to the world,” and he wondered why the media hadn’t properly promoted that aspect.