{"id":15999,"date":"2020-03-30T11:52:41","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T18:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=15999"},"modified":"2020-04-02T10:05:31","modified_gmt":"2020-04-02T17:05:31","slug":"apj-japan-focus-kingston-on-pm-abe-and-the-postponement-of-the-2020-tokyo-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=15999","title":{"rendered":"APJ-Japan Focus’s Jeff Kingston on PM Abe and postponement of 2020 Tokyo Olympics; plus the inhumanity of the Japanese Govt"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hi Blog. \u00a0I hope all Debito.org Readers and their loved ones are safe and well during this time of pandemic.<\/p>\n

It’s time to talk about the politics of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and how Prime Minister Abe has put Japan at risk for the sake of a sports meet.<\/p>\n

Dr. Jeff Kingston of Temple University Japan has posted a salient article today about the politicking between Abe’s minions and and the International Olympic Committee, and how Abe may exploit any crisis he exacerbated for his own political benefit. \u00a0It’s very much worth a read:<\/p>\n

=======================================<\/p>\n

Kingston Abstract: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has been widely criticized for ineptitude in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Keen to host the Olympics in 2020, he put public health at risk. Strong international criticism finally forced the IOC and Abe to accept the inevitable and defer the Olympics until 2021. Now both parties are now trying to claim credit for making this decision. The Japanese policy of limiting testing kept policymakers and citizens in the dark and handicapped responses to the outbreak. As the number of infections surges, the government is playing catch up. The combination of an accelerating COVID-19 outbreak in Japan and imminent global economic recession will hit Japan hard and could lead to Abe\u2019s ouster. For now, there are growing concerns that he may exploit this crisis to advance his political agenda of constitutional revision.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Read the whole article at:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/apjjf.org\/2020\/7\/Kingston.html<\/a><\/p>\n

=======================================<\/p>\n

COMMENT<\/strong>: \u00a0It bears articulating here that Japan (despite a number of premature “rosy” reports bordering on the typical “Japan is unique, special, and immune to world trends<\/a>“) is now probably going to see its infected cases ramp up and people die<\/a>. \u00a0For much the same reason that Trump initially called the pandemic a “hoax<\/a>” (buying some time for him and his buddies to sell off their stock before the market crashed<\/a>), Abe forewent systemic and widespread infection testing to make sure case numbers stayed low (even excluding the infected Diamond Princess cruise ship passengers, who were largely Japanese, from the national tally<\/a>). \u00a0All because the people who have money would rather risk the lives of the elderly and immunocompromised (as happened in the 1980s with Japan’s Health Ministry and HIV-tainted blood<\/a>) than let any economic impacts of postponing an Olympics reduce their political power or their already-stuffed wallets.<\/p>\n

If the rich and powerful are so concerned about the economic well-being of the people who actually man and power national economies, they should re-seed much of their money back into subsidizing the incomes of people who can’t work during lockdown (while governments should pass national policies to temporarily suspend rents, mortgages, and rents on commercial properties). \u00a0So that people can all get through this crisis faster by hunkering down in place. \u00a0Not make things worse by being forced to work, contaminating each other in clusters, getting sick all at once and dying of insufficient care after overloading hospitals. \u00a0Tycoons could also drop a few hundred million on scientific research facilities and production of various PPEs to keep our health-care professions functional on the front lines. \u00a0(I’m sure they can get along just fine with their remaining few hundred millions.)<\/p>\n

The short-sightedness and greed of people richer than God who won’t subsidize consumers and taxpayers (who have long subsidized THEIR lives) is astonishing. \u00a0Especially since a dead consumer\/taxpayer and their remaining resentful kith and kin is of no use to them either. \u00a0This should be pointed out at every opportunity.<\/p>\n

Instead (and this where the Debito.org subject matter comes in), we have Japanese media trying to blame foreigners<\/a> again. \u00a0We’ve already seen the regular knee-jerk reaction (seen in health scares ere: e.g.,\u00a0\u201cNJ have AIDS<\/a>\u201d (1986), \u201cNJ have SARS<\/a>\u201d (2003)) of treating it as a “Chinese virus<\/a>” (singling out Yokohama’s Chinatown<\/a>). \u00a0Or even just portraying it as a general “foreign virus” and shutting out<\/a> all “foreign” customers <\/a>(including NJ residents who haven’t been abroad, but not Wajin who have). \u00a0But since we can’t blame foreign tourists anymore (world tourism has screeched to a halt), we’re now seeing regular media portraying it as a “returnee” virus (where Japanese returning from infected gaikoku<\/em> are stigmatized<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Anything but blame the government for their political decision not embarrass or disrupt by\u00a0testing widely<\/a> and bringing on the lockdown.<\/a> People will die for this. \u00a0Again, all for the sake of a sports meet. \u00a0Read Kingston above for more. \u00a0Debito Arudou Ph.D.<\/p>\n

======================
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It’s time to talk about the politics of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and how Prime Minister Abe has put Japan at risk for the sake of a sports meet. Dr. Jeff Kingston of Temple University Japan has posted a salient article today about the politicking between Abe’s minions and and the International Olympic Committee, and how Abe may exploit any crisis he exacerbated for his own political benefit. \u00a0It’s very much worth a read. <\/p>\n

Kingston Abstract: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has been widely criticized for ineptitude in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Keen to host the Olympics in 2020, he put public health at risk. Strong international criticism finally forced the IOC and Abe to accept the inevitable and defer the Olympics until 2021. Now both parties are now trying to claim credit for making this decision. The Japanese policy of limiting testing kept policymakers and citizens in the dark and handicapped responses to the outbreak. As the number of infections surges, the government is playing catch up. The combination of an accelerating COVID-19 outbreak in Japan and imminent global economic recession will hit Japan hard and could lead to Abe\u2019s ouster. For now, there are growing concerns that he may exploit this crisis to advance his political agenda of constitutional revision.<\/p>\n

Comment: All because the people who have money would rather risk the lives of the elderly and immunocompromised (as happened in the 1980s with Japan’s Health Ministry and HIV-tainted blood) than let any economic impacts of postponing an Olympics reduce their political power or their already-stuffed wallets. The short-sightedness and greed of people richer than God who won’t subsidize consumers and taxpayers (who have long subsidized THEIR lives) is astonishing. \u00a0Especially since a dead consumer\/taxpayer and their remaining resentful kith and kin is of no use to them either. \u00a0This should be pointed out at every opportunity.<\/p>\n

Instead (and this where the Debito.org subject matter comes in), we have media trying to blame foreigners again. \u00a0We’ve already seen the regular knee-jerk reaction (seen in health scares ere: e.g.,\u00a0\u201cNJ have AIDS\u201d (1986), \u201cNJ have SARS\u201d (2003)) of treating it as a “Chinese virus” (and singling out Yokohama’s Chinatown). \u00a0Or even just as a general “foreign virus” and shutting out all “foreign” customers. \u00a0But since we can’t blame foreign tourists anymore (world tourism has screeched to a halt), we’re now seeing regular media portraying this as a “returnee” virus, where Japanese returning from infected gaikoku are stigmatized. Anything but blame the government for their political decision not embarrass or disrupt by\u00a0testing widely and bringing on the lockdown.\u00a0 People will die for this. Again, all for the sake of a sports meet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,43,36,52,73,4,14,16,13,11,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embedded-racism","category-bad-business-practices","category-bad-social-science","category-hate-speech","category-japans-blame-game","category-japanese-government","category-japanese-politics","category-labor-issues","category-media","category-problematic-foreign-treatment","category-unsustainable-japanese-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15999"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16009,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15999\/revisions\/16009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}