Holding the Tokyo Olympics shreds consensus in Japan with concerns about COVID-19 at odds with political and financial interests: ‘It’s a bit like a gambler who already has lost too much’

“We have been cornered into a situation where we cannot even stop now. We are damned if we do, and damned if we do not,” Kaori Yamaguchi, a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee and a bronze medalist in judo in 1988, wrote in a recent editorial published by the Kyodo news agency. “The IOC also seems to think that public opinion in Japan is not important.”