Buying Gold Medals

A bill for establishing Sports Agency in Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, or MEXT, passed National Diet. The new governmental organization will begin its work in this October. The typical purpose of it is to obtain twenty to thirty-three gold medals in Tokyo Olympic in 2020. Shinzo Abe administration seems to like to have national goal in every aspect of its governance.

Policies over sports have been divided with bureaucratic sectionalism. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has been responsible for building sport facilities like stadium or arena, while Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare focuses on sports for disabled people. Professional sports are supervised by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry from the viewpoint of commercial business. MEXT was recognized as in charge of sports in schools. “We recognize Sports Agency as the control tower for sport policies. Not only supporting top athletes, we hope to contribute to people’s life,” told Minister for Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Hakubun Shimomura.

The government seems to be making U.K. Sports, a governmental organization in United Kingdom which succeeded in increasing gold medals in London Olympic from nineteen to twenty-nine. By intensively distributing budget for sports, Japanese Sports Agency will govern all the organizations related to sports. Currently, budget for sports is only a third of it for Cultural Agency.

One of the groups that opposed establishing Sports Agency was Japan Olympic Committee, which had been responsible for training athletes for Olympic games. Sports Agency could not get full authority to distribute money for training, because JOC blocked it by lobbying to Minister of Finance, Taro Aso, the chairman of legislators’ association for sports. Budget for training will be shared by Sports Agency and JOC. It is an ordinary struggle for sharing tax money.

So, is it possible for Japan to achieve such a goal to increase gold medals? Gold medals for Japan in London Olympic in 2012 was only seven. The agency has “strategic” plan for Tokyo Olympic to concentrate its money to hopeful sports including marathon, swimming, gymnastics and table tennis. The agency expects those sports to get gold medals. Men’s soccer was dropped from those hopeful sports, while women’s soccer was picked.

After all, it is based on a concept of buying gold medals through intensive distribution of governmental money. Is it an overestimation that the administration is enhancing nationalism through intensive policy on Olympic sports?