A man with a face mask stands behind the Olympic symbols of the five interlaced rings depicted near the National Stadium in Tokyo.
James Matsumoto, SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images
A senior Japanese ruling party official said the cancellation of the Olympic Games in Tokyo remains an option if the coronavirus crisis becomes too dire, as a fourth-wave infection rises less than 100 days from the planned start of the Games.
“If it seems impossible to do more of this, we must stop decisively,” Toshihiro Nikai, secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, told broadcaster TBS.
Cancellation is obviously an option, Nikai said. “If the Olympics were to spread contagion, then what are the Olympics for?” he added.
A key supporter of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, the heavyweight of the party, Nikai, is known for his candid comments, which come because many other lawmakers from the ruling parties avoided discussing the button of a possible cancellation.
The world’s largest sporting event has already been delayed by a year and is being held without international spectators.
Japan is battling rising coronavirus infections, with numbers rising in Tokyo after the government ended a state of emergency, and Osaka has had a record number of cases.
The government is continuing preparations that include social distance measures and other restrictions for the Games starting on July 23, with a reduced torch relay underway.
“We hold (the Games) in a way that is achievable,” Taro Kono, a popular minister responsible for vaccinating Japan, told a separate TV program, according to Kyodo News. “It could be without spectators,” he added.
Little support
Polls show little support in Japan for holding the Games during a global pandemic. “Canceling Olympics” worked on Twitter in Japan on Thursday with more than 35,000 tweets from users.
“When this person says that, the cancellation of the Olympics seems like a reality,” @marumaru_clm tweeted, referring to Nikai.
Olympic organizers, the National Olympic Committee in Japan and the government in Tokyo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Legislators’ comments come as health experts sound the alarm about the spread of infection and stress it puts on the medical system.
Japan’s biggest medical adviser, Shigeru Omi, has admitted that the pandemic has entered a fourth wave, driven by mutant tribes, and Hiroshi Nishiura, a professor at Kyoto University, has demanded in a magazine comment that the Olympic Games be postponed .
Akira Koike, an opposition lawmaker at the Japanese Communist Party, responded to Nikai’s comments on Twitter, saying the opportunity was already “impossible” and that a decision on cancellation should be made “quickly”.
The cancellation or postponement of the Games is unlikely to hurt the Japanese economy much, but will have a greater impact on Tokyo’s services sector, a senior official of the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday.