‘No Recovery’ Olympics
回復オリンピックなし




Katsunobu Sakurai, former mayor of Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, who was in office during the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, firmly stated during a recent interview with the Mainichi Shimbun that it is unfeasible to dub the Tokyo Olympics a "sign of humanity's triumph over the novel coronavirus,"
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Sakurai, who was born in the city of Minamisoma himself, served two terms as mayor for his hometown between 2010 and 2018. Sakurai was picked as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2011 following the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
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“No matter how much you tout the games as a sign of recovery, the overall picture of only Tokyo prospering while the recovery of the disaster-hit areas of the Tohoku region remains undone will not change...I’ve been to Tokyo many times, and saw that there were more crane trucks at the construction site of the athletes’ village than in the disaster-hit areas.”
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“The torch relay for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which was eventually canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak, was just a performance put on for show. The relay was set to start at the J-Village national soccer training center in Fukushima Prefecture, which was used as a base to handle the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster (after the Great East Japan Earthquake). However, the relay route was limited to areas that have been tidied up, and did not show the real nature of the disaster-hit areas.”




"Recovery" means restoring an environment to a state where people can return. At the very least, if residents have returned and can once again live in a state similar to before the disaster, this may be called a recovery. But the government is trying to show how far the recovery has progressed, when in fact there is much left to be achieved.
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I was confronted by an elderly resident of my city who asked, "It's a dangerous place here, isn't it? Why don't you let us live in Tokyo?"
A "recovery Olympics" should by nature be something that residents of the disaster-stricken areas can feel good about.
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I've been to Tokyo many times, and saw that there were more crane trucks at the construction site of the athletes' village than in the disaster-hit areas. It was obvious at a glance where the national government was placing its resources. holding...



It is superficial to declare a recovery with no actual progress. The government is now talking of an Olympics that could be a sign of humanity's triumph over the pandemic, but vaccines have not yet been put into practical use, and the world has not yet been freed from the risk of infection.

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