SNA (Tokyo) — When I started writing this month’s column, Yoshiro Mori, an 83-year-old fossil of Japanese politics, was still president of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Organising Committee, where he had come under fire for comments claiming that women in leadership positions “talk too much,” cluttering meetings with competitive chatter. He has since resigned, but in the wake has come much media commentary about Japan’s sexism and women’s disenfranchisement.

Photos appeared showing meetings of top-level Japan business organizations (such as Keidanren) that look like old-boy clubs. Pundits noted that Japan has slipped in the World Economic Forum’s gender-empowerment index to 121st place out of 153 countries measured (the lowest amongst the developed countries, behind China, Zimbabwe, Brunei, and Myanmar). And my favorite: Japan idiotically sending a man (Taro Kono) to the world’s first meeting of women foreign ministers in 2018.

All this has occurred despite former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s much-touted policy of freeing the women workforce as the “greatest potential for the growth of the Japanese economy.” He would create “a society in which women can shine.” Mori’s sexist comments make clear that hasn’t happened.

So let’s focus on what Mori himself represented: the worst of Japan’s politics, melding misogyny with racism.

I remember when Mori first appeared on my radar screen back in 2000, when then-Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, an occasionally-canny fellow likened to “cold pizza,” suddenly keeled over with a stroke and died. Mori, who had made his money off insider trading during the Recruit Scandal of the 1980s, succeeded Obuchi simply because he was next in line. His essential skill set was classic old-school Japanese politics (i.e., power-brokering in smoke-filled back rooms and hostess bars) within a generational political class that left the real governing to the bureaucrats. A generalist on perpetual cruise control, Mori had held just about every Cabinet post because that’s just what you did in the Liberal Democratic Party as you waited your turn. He even kept the Obuchi Cabinet intact since he knew better than to touch the controls.

But Mori soon showed just how unsuited he was to a public-facing job by flaunting his elite male privilege, doing whatever he wanted regardless of how it made Japan look. Internationally, he was embarrassingly photographed as host of the 2000 G8 Summit in Okinawa looking asleep at the table, and he focused on French President Jacques Chirac’s love of sumo instead of global poverty. Domestically, he suggested people who weren’t voting for him “stay in bed for the day” instead of participating in Japan’s democracy. He even flubbed the closing salutations at Obuchi’s funeral, and decided to finish a golf game instead of immediately attending to a major international tragedy, the collision of the Ehime Maru ship with an US submarine off Hawaii, which killed several people, including Japanese high school students and teachers. Mori’s administration was so disastrous that he was out of office after one year with popularity polls in the single digits, probably the worst for any Japanese prime minister in history.

Granted that Japan, as any nation, sometimes chooses “fish out of water” leaders, but Mori has remained on my radar because of his bigotry. He famously declared Japan was a “divine nation with the Emperor at the center” in violation of the spirit of Japan’s Constitution, and freely used other prewar invective that raised international worries about Japan remaining a liberal democracy. Despite this, he kept getting awarded elder statesman positions, such as liaison to Vladimir Putin. And as an avid rugger, Mori became the chairman of the Japan Rugby Football Union (JRFU), successfully getting Japan to host the 2019 World Cup, and, most famously, of course, the leadership of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Organising Committee.

His sports leadership positions were particularly unsuitable given the pressure Mori puts on Japan’s athletes. For example, during the Sochi Olympics, he criticized champion figure skater Mao Asada for having the audacity to tumble during a triple axel and not win Gold for Japan. Worse, however, was when he criticized Japan skaters Chris and Cathy Reed when they didn’t medal, claiming it was because they were somehow not genuine Japanese (despite being born to a Japanese mother and having Japanese citizenship by blood): “They live in America. Although they are not good enough for the US team in the Olympics, we included these naturalized citizens on the team.”

Mori’s attitude towards Japan’s visible minorities of “you’re in only if you win” is actually prevalent in Japan’s sports, but Mori did nothing to discourage it. For example, while Mori was its chair, the JRFU purged the national team’s rosters of all “foreigners” (including its naturalized citizens) after blaming them for a poor showing in the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Last year, the JRFU classified all naturalized Japanese players as “foreign,” in clear violation of Japan’s Nationality Law. (The even more racist Japan Sumo Association did the same thing in 2010.)

But there’s plenty more bigotry in Japan’s sports in general. An egregious incident occurred in 2007, when Japan’s Ekiden relay races put barriers in place to hinder foreign runners from winning because, according to the Japan Association of Athletic Associations, “the differences in physical capabilities between Japanese and foreign students are far beyond imagination.” Allegations were that fans had complained that the races were “dull” because foreigners won.

So much for the spirit of fair play that should undergird any competition, let alone the Olympics. This begs the question of how Japan manages to secure so many international events.

But here’s the funny thing: According to opportunistic racists and sexists like Mori, Japan is a pure monoethnic nation until it’s time to put on a show for the gaijin. Then they wheel out Japan’s visible minorities.

Remember Christel Takigawa, the French-Japanese TV announcer who was the standout at Tokyo’s successful 2013 Olympic pitch? Gesticulating out the supposedly unique Japanese concept of omotenashi (a hitherto obscure word, but if you remove the shakuhachi soundtrack and overblown mysticism, it basically just means “hospitality”), she was there showing the world a new face of Japan—one of tolerance, multilingualism, and diversity.

But once Takigawa served her purpose, she was returned to relative official obscurity. Unlike Mori.

And that’s why Mori was so bewildered when he got into so much trouble. He was just doing what he always does—making offhand remarks that would get laughs in the hostess bars. But the world stage in the era of #MeToo is not a hostess bar. Mori thought that offering his typical fey apologies would do the trick, and in fact it nearly worked—even the International Olympic Committee originally considered the matter closed. But concerted international outrage forced the Japanese Olympic Committee’s hand.

And then who was initially suggested to replace him? Someone even older and male. Lessons not learned.

Mori’s decades of existence in the public arena despite having no public relations talent are emblematic of how Japan wastes its human resources. And while raising the issue of Japan’s underrepresented women is surely overdue, let’s not forget an even more underrepresented group: Japan’s international citizens. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese with international roots (we don’t have exact numbers because Japan’s Census refuses to survey Japanese citizens for ethnicity) and experiences could no doubt have done better representing Japan than the Mori types.

But the problem here is not just Japan’s regular accumulation of power in entitled old men. Japan has policies that actually weed out diversity as untrustworthy. For example, Japan’s Maritime Self Defense Forces were reported in 2007 to be removing officers with a foreign spouse from “sensitive posts.” I have also been told of similar practices in Japan’s military and national police forces. That’s in addition to the political outcry about the potential divided loyalties of Japanese politicians with possible dual nationality (such as former opposition leader Renho). The Tokyo District Court even ruled last month that Japanese who obtain other nationalities may have their Japanese nationality revoked without any constitutional protections, and that’s before we get to the rising tide of xenophobic rhetoric normalizing itself in Japan’s political discourse.

The point is if you are part of Japan’s diverse citizenry, your talents are side-eyed, not celebrated. Where is the society where they can “shine”? Japan’s embedded racism ensures it will squander this talent and punch below its weight in the international arena.

Back to Mori. He is famously known as having “the heart of a flea and the brain of a shark.” Fortunately, like a bad tooth, Mori has now been extracted. But shark’s teeth are designed so that a new one moves forward to take its place. Fundamental reforms are needed to get the sharks out of leadership positions.

So here’s my suggestion: Do something unprecedented. Don’t just put a woman in charge of the Olympics. Put a visible minority there. Let her or him be the international face of Japan.

Don’t let talented people like Christel Takigawa be used merely as opportunistic imagery. Let visible minorities “shine,” not just be shiny objects.

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