In Nagoya, Japan, the sumo tournament for the Kaiser Cup has just ended. Around 3800 fans applauded when Grandmaster Hakuho won his 45th title. The hall was half full. In Saitama, a prefecture right next to Tokyo, almost 9,000 visitors watched an all-star game of the baseball league in a hall over the weekend. In Miyagi, further north, there were almost 15,000 fans, or about half the seating capacity in the open-air stadium. J-League football games also take place naturally with a limited number of spectators. The big riddle for those who have come and for local athletes and disappointed Japanese fans is: If all major sports in Japan allow spectators, why do the Olympic Games have to do without sports fans to a large extent?
The decision has only limited to do with the different corona locations in the prefectures. Tokyo is under a virus emergency on the part of the government because the number of new infections there is increasing rapidly. In other prefectures, less strict anti-corona rules apply. But in Tokyo and in the other prefectures, the rules allow a limited number of spectators even at sporting events. The exclusion of spectators from the Olympic Games is a special regulation to which most of the prefectures with Olympic sports facilities have joined. Only Miyagi and Ibaraki, who have relatively low numbers of infections, will allow limited spectators into the stadiums.
Anyone who asks about the reasons for the special regulation receives the rather general answer that the Games as a major international event are something completely different from regular events in individual sports. Doubts about this are more than allowed. The Olympic Games combine indoor and outdoor sports, they bring people of different nationalities from all possible parts of the world together.
This carries a greater risk of infection with corona virus variants for the athletes. But also for the audience? The special charm of the rare major event also suggests that the games would get more Japanese viewers going and then drive them to a cozy get-together than a normal baseball game. That would increase the corona risks. The Japanese government cannot completely prevent such behavior. Also out of respect for individual liberties, Japan never intervened as harshly in people's lives as Western governments during the pandemic.
The government's top virus advisor, Shigeru Omi, warned a few weeks ago that it was abnormal to host Olympic Games in the middle of the pandemic. But rightly the decision about the games and the number of spectators in a democracy remains an originally political one, which the government cannot leave to the experts. The absence of Olympic spectators in the stadiums is also a consequence of the fact that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's government is losing approval under the impression of rising infection rates and a stuttering vaccination campaign. Fears of the virus and the Olympics are great in Japan. No government can get around that, even if some athletes and sports fans don't like it.