Overcoming Olympic Apathy

Tokyo submitted its candidature file to the International Olympic Committee in its bid to host the 2020 Summer Games. The Japanese capital is in the final running for the honor along with Madrid and Istanbul.

The city’s new governor, Naoki Inose, has pledged to pursue the matter with the same enthusiasm as his predecessor Shintaro Ishihara, who came up with the Olympic campaign originally and eventually lost the bid for the 2016 Games.

Ishihara retired last fall to run for the national assembly at the head of a new party. Some believe Tokyo may actually have a better chance without Ishihara, who is Japan’s most infamous nationalist and tends to rub other East Asian countries the wrong way with his defiant stance about Japan’s intentions during World War II.

As with its 2016 proposal, Tokyo is promoting a “green” Olympics by pledging that all events except soccer will be held within 8 kilometers of the Olympic Village, which will be located on landfill in Tokyo Bay. However, rather than build a new Olympic Stadium for the 2020 games, the city says it will renovate the stadium it built for the 1964 Olympics, which reintroduced a newly viable Japan to the world after the devastation of the war.

That stadium and its satellite venues are still being used extensively today for sporting events and concerts. The Athletes’ Village would be new, covering 44 hectares, or 13 more than the one proposed for 2016.

Because all the facilities would be close to one another, less carbon would be emitted. Altogether, 22 of the 37 proposed venues will be built from scratch for a cost of 310 billion yen ($3.4 billion).

The city is expecting a 1.6 trillion yen ($17.8 billion) windfall in return, and the country 3 trillion yen.

The main obstacle is public apathy, which was cited in the IOC’s report as one of the main reasons Tokyo lost the ’16 Games.

The IOC’s own survey found that only 56 percent of Tokyo residents were in favor of hosting the Olympics, as opposed to 85 percent in Rio, which won the hosting competition.

Last May, the IOC conducted another survey and found only a 47 percent support rate in Tokyo, while the rates were 78 percent and 73 percent, respectively, in Istanbul and Madrid.

Inose is trying to rally the city residents to the Olympic cause by pumping more money into promotional activities (which could backfire because many residents are opposed for fiscal reasons), such as a recent parade of Olympic athletes that attracted 500,000 people.