As the one-year-delayed 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic festival finally gets underway this week, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach is not a popular man in Japan. This might seem odd given that Bach had a major role in bringing this big event to the Japanese capital.
But that’s precisely the problem: a majority of Japanese citizens believe that the Olympic spectacle, even without fans in the stands, should not be proceeding amid a pandemic that resists adequate containment. They argue that Bach’s IOC puts revenues from TV broadcasts and corporate sponsorships above the safety of athletes and the general public. Even Toyota, Japan’s premier Olympic sponsor, has decided not to run Olympic-themed advertisements during the Games: Who wants to be associated with a plague? Bach himself did nothing to improve his image with locals by mistakenly referring to the Japanese people as “Chinese” at a news conference.
