80% of Japanese oppose holding this year’s Tokyo Olympics
Tokyo … News Time
Eighty percent of Japanese are opposed to hosting this year’s corona-infected mega-event Olympics in Tokyo. According to the French news agency AFP, the new poll on Monday came just 10 weeks before the start of the Olympics. Japan is currently battling a fourth wave of corona virus, and the government announced a state of emergency on Friday. The rise in corona virus cases has put pressure on the country’s health system, and medical experts have warned of a possible shortage of health facilities. According to the Asahi Shimbun Newspaper’s Weekend Poll, 43% of Japanese want the Tokyo Olympics to be canceled, while 40% want the mega event to be postponed further. In a poll conducted by the same newspaper a month ago, 35% of people were in favor of canceling the Olympics, while 34% said that the Olympics should be postponed further. “I am one of the 80 percent of the population,” Semiko Asoi, 74, told AFP. I think the Olympics should be postponed. Is it so hard to postpone this event?
Takahiro Yoshida, 53, has also expressed concerns about holding the event. “In my honest opinion, the Olympics will be very difficult,” he said. According to a poll by the Asahi Shimbun Newspaper, only 14% of Japanese now support holding the Olympics this summer, compared to 28% in a previous survey of 3,191 out of 1,527 people. 59% of Japanese people want the Olympics to be held without spectators. One-third say the Games should be with fewer spectators, while only three percent say the Olympics should be with a full number of spectators.
It may be recalled that the participation of foreign spectators was banned in March for the Tokyo Olympics, which was delayed due to the corona virus. Announcing the decision, Olympic organizers described it as “disappointing but inevitable”. Following the ruling, the Tokyo Olympics will be the first mega-event in history to ban foreign spectators. However, the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, said in an interview that the Tokyo Olympics, which had been delayed due to the corona virus, would be held this summer, and that “there is no plan B. According to the head of the IOC, at this time we have no reason to believe that the Tokyo Olympics will not start on July 23 the March 2020 Tokyo Olympics were postponed due to the global spread of the corona virus. The games were supposed to be held from July 24 to August 9, 2020, but according to the new schedule, the games are now to be held from July 23 to August 8, 2021.
