Thread by @gjmorley

I would add the general opacity that the government has become accustomed to over the previous decades. For a long time, the Japanese people (meaning voters) have behaved in a docile manner, in deference to political power and corporate will.

https://twitter.com/LucyHockingsBBC/status/1417480274116550656

The LDP admin was able to push ahead with its optimistic projection that the COVID crisis will be taken care of by this time of year. Additionally, the LDP admin was able to curb experts to its will, so that mostly optimistic views were propagated in the mainstream media.

Additionally, there is a culture of power-friendly media that almost never frontally challenges politicians or corporations (i.e. sponsors). Dissent is expressed euphemistically if expressed at all. One exception is during a public outcry. The large media corporations may

momentarily switch sides and turn on particular politicians or corporations. But as the crisis blows over, it is also the same media corporations that help paper things over. In blunt terms, the media acts in a mercenary manner, usually aligned with whoever is strongest.

So, experts on immunology who sounded strong warnings before the 2020 Olympics were first postponed got short shrift in public attention, and voices questioning the viability of holding the Olympics at all were given some token moments to speak but were never taken seriously

(because the gov didn't have to answer them), officials in charge were allowed to get away with vague promises that things were or soon will be under control, and the politicization of the Olympics meant that the liberal left was against and the right was for the games,

which further gave cover to the LDP admin not to be transparent about why the games were going ahead (if you were in opposition, well you must be left-wing). So, having successfully neutralized or at least blunted demands for accountability, the gov and IOC earned a free hand.

Japan being a democracy, a foreigner might ask: what were the opposition political parties doing? Ah yes, what were they doing indeed. On paper, the left-wing parties make sound arguments to counterbalance the excesses of the LDP. In practice, they just don't cut it.

Election after election, left-wing parties have performed miserably. They have not been able to escape the orbit of their self-inflicted image of "the parties that only complain without offering alternate solutions". Even in the midst of this outcry,

were there elections held tomorrow, the LDP and its allies will probably win out, esp in the local prefectures. To summarize, the Japanese population has grown accustomed to all this, political discussion is tuned to favor the LDP, so the gov knows that it can get away with it.

Explaining that in the span of interview time, even at my top BPM was quite a hurdle, so I stuck to answering the specific questions. In the future, if anyone would like to hear the long answer, I would be happy to oblige. Thanks for watching!

There are hashtags like
#もううんざりだよ東京五輪 which mean "We've had enough of the Tokyo Olympics" that go around. These hastags are shared in very large volumes, but there is a disconnect between opinions expressed online and what television and newspapers report.

It isn't that TV and newspapers outright "lie" or falsify facts. However, in their headlines and wording, a deliberate toning-down almost always takes place. That is an art in itself. Bilingual journalists have begun pointing out this disconnect, in particular with the

scandal of the opening ceremony composer, Mr. Keigo Oyamada. One article which painstakingly analyzes the difference in how the same incident has been reported in Japanese and in English can be read here:

news.yahoo.co.jp/byline/saorii/…