Disease Reappeared

Olympic madness of the Japanese reached a peak on Thursday. In ladies figure skating, Mao Asada showed her best performance in free skating, though she finally stayed in the sixth position due to her unusual failure in short program the day before. Ignoring their responsibility of excessive expectation of the people on her, media reported her failure as a tragedy and praised her determination in recovering for recovery. Politics, always exploiting sports events, did not conceal its disappointment on her poor performance, receiving huge booing from net freaks.

Former Prime Minister, Yoshiro Mori, being appointed to the Head of Tokyo 2020 Olympic Organizing Committee, harshly criticized Asada. “Although I was watching her with expectation of good performance, she beautifully fell down. That girl always falls down in critical moment, I don’t know why,” told Mori. Looking frustrated with the fifth position of team figure skating in the early stage of Sochi Olympic, Mori also revealed his sarcastic analysis. “She should have not showed up in the team competition,” said Mori,” She beautifully fell down, though Japan team expected the third position, if Asada would be successful in triple axel.”

Mori is well known as a man of foot-in-mouth disease. When he was in his premiership, he called Japan the State of God. Just before an Upper House election, he told that he wanted the independents to keep on “sleeping” not to raise voters’ turnout. After being criticized on his irrelevance in making appropriate speech, his destiny as prime minister tapered off with steep decline in his popularity. His stupidity was described as “a man with shark brain.” Learning no lesson from the past, he received nation-wide accusations again.

People’s response on Asada’s failure was overwhelmingly warm and encouraging. But it was them that had constantly been pressuring her by expecting gold medal. Asahi Shimbun introduced Asada in the morning edition on Thursday that “She dedicates her performance in short program to her late mother, going toward a gold medal she dreamed with her mom.” Because the news deadline was before her performance, the article was written in future tense. When the issue arrived to the readers, Asada was suffering from a terrible result.

TVs were sympathetic to her, repeating footage of her successful performance in free skating. Watchers wept, praised and chanted in front of TV screen. Interviewees in the reports thanked her of giving them courage, dream and excitement. Satisfied with media-made moving story, people get back to their ordinary jobs.