Winners’ Homework

After merciless competition among candidates, Tokyo won the ticket of hosting Olympic Games in 2020. International Olympic Committee seemed to have focused on relative political and economic stability of Tokyo, while other two, Istanbul, Turkey, and Madrid, Spain, were in short of assuring those points. It still is unsure that Tokyo will be able to fulfill the expectations.

Before the decision, it was Madrid for Tokyo team to target for winning the ticket. Madrid, however, got out of the race in the first vote, being worried about economic slump these years. Some argued that negative reputation of Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. was disadvantage for Madrid. Istanbul, suffered from growing possibility of United States military attack on neighboring Syria, could not catch up Tokyo in final vote. One can say that decline of other candidates were biggest advantage for Tokyo.

Tokyo still has a lot of homework to be done by 2020. While people in Japan have got been optimistic about their future, Japan’s economy is still unstable in terms of its fundamentals. There are only a few industries, namely Toyota or Honda, that showed resilience in cheaper yen. Most are very careful in further capital investment. The amount of national debt is going to increase next year. Nobody can anticipate better shape of Japan’s economy seven years later.

More unclear is the situation of reconstruction from the great earthquake and nuclear power plant accident. Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, insisted that the leak of contaminated water from the First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant was limited inside the port pertaining to the site. It was intensive underestimation. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands tons of contaminated water has been leaked to the sea. The data Abe used was submitted by incompetent Tokyo Electric Power Company. Who will believe the story that a company unable to control land water can control sea water? The greater problem is in reactor No. 4 in the site, with which numerous used fuel rods are stocked in the pool. TEPCO is still controlling the situation of them.

If Abe administration continues for years, the relationship with China and South Korea will not be improved so much. No one can deny the possibility of those countries to boycott Tokyo Olympics, in case territorial issues or interpretation of history gets more complicated.

“Japan will appear as a country firmly reconstructed from the devastation,” told Abe in his winning speech. However, Japan is still in jeopardy of dropping the ticket by unimaginable accident for coming years. As long as seeing the difference between suffered region and others, Japan does not look like being integrated enough to make the event successful.