SNA (Tokyo) — On the eve of the Tokyo Olympics, let’s talk about the mess.

Much space has been devoted to the idiocracy behind spending record amounts of money on infrastructure that is not built to last, or even if it is, it often winds up abandoned. Further, holding a superspreader sports meet during a global pandemic is a surefire path to social discord and preventable death.

But it matters that Japan is hosting this mess. This column as usual will first focus on the Olympics’ impact on our minorities, and then talk about the IOC’s responsibility for scamming Japan.

Let’s kick off with some bellwether news, where the Tokyo Akasaka Hotel Excel Tokyu segregated its elevators into “Japanese Only” and “Foreigner Only” a couple of weeks ago. Called out on this, the management cited the Olympic Organising Committee’s command to contain Covid by avoiding “contact between foreign and general guests.” After much criticism, the sign was amended to “Foreigner Priority” (Oh, much better! Not.) before being taken down entirely.

Yes, management can blame the Olympics for their actions, but as usual Japan’s hospitality industry “succumbed to the binary”—where they assumed guests are either 1) foreign or 2) Japanese (as opposed to “Japan resident” and “overseas tourist,” which cuts across nationalities). A moment of critical thinking might have produced signs saying “Olympics Participant” vs. “Non-Participant.”

But the irony here is that their binary approach got it exactly wrong. Overseas visitors are likely safer to be around than Japanese, as the former has been screened for Covid before and after entry, and in many cases arrived from countries with higher vaccination rates than Japan’s. Thanks to Japan’s delayed inoculation program and its resistance to remote work, people here are probably more exposed to variants brought in long ago (by Japanese) and incubated in poorly-ventilated workplaces, crowded trains, and restaurants.

But at least Olympics events will be remote. First they banned foreign spectators from overseas (of course), and then all spectators, and finally the Olympic participants themselves: Athletes, participants, and world media have been told not to cheer, sing, chant, engage in interviews, purchase alcohol, or even, um, engage in sexual activity.

“Avoid unnecessary forms of physical contact,” the Olympic Playbook has warned athletes, discouraging them from mingling in the Olympic Village or on the playing field, even demanding they eat and sleep alone. Even the cardboard beds are reportedly “anti-sex,” designed to collapse if there’s more than one occupant (which is odd: I have the feeling one weightlifter equals three gymnasts). The Irish Times reported that the 160,000 condoms being distributed as part of Olympic tradition are “not intended for use in the athletes’ village. They are meant to be taken home and used to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS.” Yeah, whatever.

But the more serious issue was an official memo warning reporters that “the people of Japan will be paying close attention to your every move as you participate in the Games. In the unlikely event that you are suspected or found to be in infringement of the Playbooks, such activity may be photographed and shared on social media by bystanders.”

That’s creepy. A letter signed by ten major media sports editors protested, “Some of these measures we have described go beyond limiting the spread of the virus and speak directly and chiefly to press freedoms,” with the New York Times adding, “I fear the tracking and permissions-seeking on movements go beyond measures of safety that, to be clear, we fully expect, and set a dangerous precedent in conflict with the ideals of a free press.”

Quite, but at least now the world is getting a taste of what it’s like to be a foreigner in Japan, treated as a social bane with limited human rights that requires constant policing. The difference now is the safety valves that keep Japan tolerable—sex, alcohol, and communal activities—are also off-limits.

The thing is, for Japan’s minorities this mess will long outlast the Olympics.

Every time Japan holds major international events (be they other world championships or summits), the government spends stupid amounts of money on infrastructure, perks, and security, while generating mass hysteria about foreigners in the media and general public.

People get invited over only to be set upon by the unaccountable Japanese police, who have been specifically trained to see anyone “foreign” as a potential criminal, terrorist, hooligan, or vector of disease.

And each time, new mechanisms to police anyone who “looks foreign” get introduced. In the 1990s we had normalized racial profiling that comes with random police Gaijin Card ID checks. But after a couple of G8 Summits and a FIFA World Cup, Gaijin Card checks were unlawfully expanded to all hotel check-ins. Soon other businesses (including banks, sports clubs, Airbnbs, and even employers) were unlawfully encouraged to inspect the visa of any foreign-looking customer they were transacting with.

The new development is that police dragnets now enlist the general public. As of last December, anyone can download a free app courtesy of the Ministry of Justice that allows the hoi polloi to scan and possibly retain data from anyone’s Gaijin Card. They are further encouraged by official Immigration posters in public transportation, letting everyone know that all foreigners have Gaijin Cards to inspect as a means to smoke out illegals. Racial profiling has become a game of Pokemon Go—gotta catch ‘em all!

Predictably, this is encouraging public harassment. For example, a Tokyo man last month confronted a Muslim woman, demanded her Gaijin Card, and called the cops on her because he said her three-year-old daughter bumped into his kid in a playground. Of course, the police only dragged her and her toddler off for interrogation, then released her private details to this strange man so he could sue her.

What’s the future? We already have the means to track quarantined foreign returnees in real time, through downloadable GPS cell phone apps that must be installed on pain of deportation. Once normalized, constant foreigner tracking can be made permanent after Covid is past. Even if that doesn’t happen, the aftereffects will once again be foreigners stigmatized (as happened during the AIDS, SARS, and Covid outbreaks) as agents of contagion and other social ills. Watch for even more “Japanese Only” signs.

The Culpability of the International Olympic Committee

Now let’s expand the focus of this essay a bit, and express some sympathy for Japan where it is due.

Yes, the Japanese government once again botched an international event, and in the process made our society more intolerant and paranoid. But in this case, some of the blame must be allocated to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Like many (if not most) of the major international sports leagues, the corrupt IOC egregiously leverages its prestige, exploiting the free labor from its athletes and volunteers while enriching itself mightily at the expense of host countries.

Every Olympics in the past fifty years has gone over budget, sometimes by multiples, and the IOC’s requirements have only gotten greedier, including 35 different athletic venues, a village for the athletes and media, ceremonial and green spaces, public transportation upgrades, perks for IOC executives, and ever-increasing slices of TV rights revenues (from 4% in the 1990s to 70% during the 2016 Rio Games). And that’s after other candidate cities launched their promotion campaigns, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, and wound up with nothing.

That’s why fewer cities are applying to host, and some have even dropped out after disapproving public plebiscites. In response, the IOC has become savvy at picking out countries with authoritarian police forces or weak civil societies.

Japan in particular is an easy mark because the Olympics are an addiction.

No other Asian country has hosted as many times (four, plus two cancellations due to war). It’s one way Japan self-validates into the club of rich developed countries. Further, Japan’s elites still think they can replicate Tokyo 1964, where Japan successfully showcased itself as fully recovered economically and psychologically from the Pacific War.

The IOC is quite aware of Japan’s susceptibility to sacrificial goal setting, with IOC President Thomas Bach parroting stereotypical narratives of Japan’s “great resilience and spirit” and ability “to overcome adversity” (while recently confusing Japanese with Chinese—during a speech in Japan!).

So despite the dangers of Covid, it insisted that Tokyo proceed with a deeply unpopular Games. After all, plebiscites don’t spoil things in Japan, and who cares about Tokyo’s current State of Emergency? The Japanese government will do the IOC’s bidding at the expense of its people.

But even if suckering host cities into arrears is just what the IOC is designed to do, forever remember the aberrant evil behind Tokyo 2020. People will get sick and die from Covid, and participants may further export it worldwide. Foreigners and Visible Minorities will face another aftermath of renewed public suspicion and policing. And for what? The “Japanese Only” Olympics have been closed off even to the Japanese.

As much as this column blames Japan’s government for getting itself into this mess, I lay equal blame on the IOC for trapping Japan in this untenable situation. I bet this will be the last Olympics that Japan holds in our lifetimes.

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