With just one hundred days to go before the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics in July, the city is seeing protests calling for the Games to be delayed.
The torch relay is under way and athletes around the world are back in training. The organisers insist it’s full steam ahead but public support in Japan remains extremely low.
The country is facing a fourth wave of Covid infections, with less than 1% of the population having received a vaccination.
Clive Myrie presents BBC News at Ten reporting by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo.
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Germany and Japan are the same war criminal countries, but the paths they chose were very different. Unlike Japan, which distorts and turns away, Germany has chosen the path of acknowledging and reflecting on its past mistakes.
There are places all over Germany to record and commemorate the victims. A day of remembrance of the victims was also designated. So far, the government has compensated the victims about 106 trillion won, directly or indirectly. However, there are still many people who think it is not enough.
Japan, the same war criminal country, took a different path.
Recently, they have been moving beyond denying responsibility and trying to distort history altogether. While avoiding apologies and reparations from the past, it appears that they are isolated from the whole of Asia.
‘What actually happened can be repeated at any time.’
This is why Germany constantly records and reflects. This is why Japan should see and learn from Germany.
For countries affected by military aggression, the Rising Sun Flag is no different from Germany’s Nazi Hakenkreuz. If Japan wants to uphold the Olympic spirit, its designs and comments should never be used on the Olympic stage, and the person in charge should apologize.
Japan is the perpetrator of the invasion of Asia and the country that suffered damage from the atomic bomb. Japan is increasingly removing or denying the facts of the perpetrators, highlighting only the damage they have suffered.
In particular, while the use of the Hakenkreuz, a symbol of Germany’s Nazis, is strictly prohibited, in Japan, the Rising Sun flag is often used in Japan’s far-right wing, which still denies the history of aggression, or in support of sporting events, causing a lot of controversy.
The reason this Olympics was louder was because of the rising sun flag, a symbol of Japanese militarism and a ‘war criminal flag’. In particular, a rock wall shaped like a rising sun flag was installed at the climbing arena.
The Japanese government is in a position to allow the Rising Sun flag at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. They maintain the attitude that “they have no political intent and are merely a flag widely used in Japan.”
The Rising Sun Flag, which was the flag of the former Japanese Empire in the WorldWar II, is remembered as a “symbol of Japanese militarism” in Korea and China, which were victims of Japanese military aggression in the 20th century. The Japanese government is using the flag symbolizing war crimes even though it has not paid due compensation to the victims and has not fully reflected on its own history. In fact, the Rising Sun Flag is the flag of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, and is the flag used by far-right forces in Japan.
For this reason, the South Korean government has criticized the “Rising Sun Flag as a flag of hatred.” An associate professor of history at the University of Hawaii, analyzed Japan’s behavior, saying, “The current Japanese government has been neglecting the rise of extreme nationalist forces and has been using nationalist expressions politically.”
I am Japanese .The organizer of this Olympics has thrown away unused medical supplies including 33,000 Masks . unbelievable ! I think We don’t need any Olympics . So No more Olympic !!!.
Now that the Tokyo Olympics are done, I kinda like to look back on these protests and concerns