With the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games scheduled to take place a year from now and the government and the organizing committee scrambling to come up with countermeasures for the new coronavirus, rumblings continue both in and outside of Japan that the events are in danger of not being held.
If the pandemic is not contained and therapeutic drugs or vaccines not developed in time, the government will likely to be forced to make a tough decision by the end of this year, when measures to prevent the spread of infection at the Olympics will be compiled.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga stressed the government's determination to have the Games go on as scheduled.
"From the autumn onward, the [countermeasures] will be discussed," Suga said at a press conference Wednesday. "The government will put everything into progressing with preparations in conjunction with the organizing committee and other organizations."
In the roadmap announced in June by the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, details of infection prevention measures and for simplification of the Games are slated to be discussed from September to December and, during the preparation period for implementation from January to March 2021, the measures will be verified.
"At the end of the year, we will have to indicate what direction we will be going, such as to hold the Games while reducing the number of spectators, or asking for a further postponement," a senior official of the organizing committee said.
In short, the year-end, when the coronavirus countermeasures for the Games will be announced, would be the cutoff point for determining whether or not the Games will be held.
Currently, there is no consensus among the concerned parties on when the final decision will actually be made. John Coates, chair of the International Olympic Committee's Coordination Commission of the Tokyo Games, recently told foreign media that he took the viewpoint that October is the deadline for making that decision. Toshiaki Endo, acting chairman of the organizing committee, has said the deadline would be around March next year.
During Diet deliberations Wednesday, Seiko Hashimoto, the minister in charge of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, declined to comment in response to a question on the timing of the final decision or the possibility of the postponement. "This should not be discussed at this point," she said.
At the time that it was decided to postpone the Tokyo Games for a year, athletes and sports organizations around the world used social media and other outlets to generate momentum for the postponement. Similar pressure from abroad will likely build on whether or not to hold the Games, depending on what direction the global pandemic takes.
Many countries are in the race to develop drugs and vaccines that could hold the key to the final decision, but it remains unclear when effective and safe products could be mass-produced. If the case that the Games are canceled, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will likely bear the brunt of criticism.
Just before Abe's telephone conversation with IOC President Thomas Bach in March, he was sounded out by organizing committee chairman Yoshiro Mori on a two-year delay. Abe reportedly brushed off the idea, saying, "One year. We have no choice but to leave it in the hands of fate."
Abe's term as Liberal Democratic Party president will expire at the end of September next year, leading an LDP executive to speculate, "It is possible he insisted on a one-year postponement because he wants to be prime minister when Japan hosts the Games."
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