The Asian nation is grappling with the legacy of a Games tainted by corruption, pandemic delays and spiralling costs, serving as a warning to Paris 2024.
The Japanese capital is grappling with the aftermath of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which were marred by corruption and pandemic delays, serving as a cautionary tale for Paris ahead of this summer’s Games in the French capital.
The cost overruns, corruption and covid soured the Japanese public’s memory of the Tokyo Olympics, which took place largely behind closed doors in 2021, a year later than planned, albeit due to circumstances beyond their control.
As a result, Japan shelved the idea of hosting the Winter Olympics in the northern city of Sapporo due to a lack of public support.
Kaori Yamaguchi, who served on the board of the Japanese Olympic Committee for 10 years, told AFP that “Japanese people love the Olympics” and had high hopes for the Tokyo Games.
But Yamaguchi, who resigned from the board just before the Olympics, said the gap between expectations and reality left people “wondering who the event was for”.
“People felt positive when they saw the athletes competing (especially on television), but they had a negative impression of the organisation and management of the event,” said Yamaguchi, who won bronze in judo at the 1988 Seoul Games in South Korea.
“It felt like there was a wall that just bounced everything back – whatever people said was ignored or didn’t get through.”
The final bill for the Tokyo Olympics came in at nearly $13 billion, roughly double the original estimate, a fact that hasn’t gone unpunished by the Japanese.
In the months leading up to the Games, public opinion was divided, with many Japanese calling for the event to be cancelled because of the pandemic.
Much of their frustration was directed at the organisers, who they felt were out of touch. This feeling was exacerbated when the president of the committee, Yoshiro Mori, was forced to resign after making sexist remarks.
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The Games passed off without major incident, but will be remembered as one of the strangest in Olympic history because of the anti-virus measures, which included banning spectators from most venues.
In the aftermath of the Games, a corruption scandal erupted, generating further negative headlines.
So far, a series of trials have found 10 people guilty of paying bribes in connection with the event.
“Even if the pandemic hadn’t happened, the dishonesty, the inappropriate statements by those at the top, and the costs would still have occurred,” said Hirokazu Arai, a professor specialising in sports psychology.
The blow to the Olympics’ image in Japan proved fatal for Sapporo’s bid to host the Winter Games, which was first postponed from 2030 to 2034 and then abandoned altogether in December.
A panel investigating the failed bid found that officials had failed to adequately explain the costs and benefits of hosting the Olympics to local people, resulting in lower-than-expected support from the public.
While the central city of Nagoya will host the 2026 Asian Games, the decision was made in 2016.
Yamaguchi believes it will be “quite some time” before Japan can muster enough public support for another Olympic bid.”The modern Olympics have a history of more than 100 years, but if you can’t explain their purpose, people will see them as just another expensive event,” she says.
Yamaguchi believes that the Tokyo Olympics held up a mirror to Japanese society, allowing it to see both the good and the bad. She hopes that the positive legacy of the games will be seen “in 10 or 20 years” when the current generation of children grow up.
“The organising committee started with a theme of inclusion and diversity, and the Paralympians visited a lot of schools and so on – there was a lot of unglamorous work that people didn’t see,” she said.
“There were negative aspects, but there were also positive aspects, and they planted seeds that could blossom in the future.”