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Abe Prioritized Olympics, Slowing Japan's Pandemic Response
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has been widely criticized for ineptitude in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Keen to host the Olympics in 2020, he put public health at risk. Strong international criticism finally forced the IOC and Abe to accept the inevitable and defer the Olympics until 2021. Now both parties are now trying to claim credit for making this decision. The Japanese policy of limiting testing kept policymakers and citizens in the dark and handicapped responses to the outbreak. As the number of infections surges, the government is playing catch up. The combination of an accelerating COVID-19 outbreak in Japan and imminent global economic recession will hit Japan hard and could lead to Abe's ouster. For now, there are growing concerns that he may exploit this crisis to advance his political agenda of constitutional revision.
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- Copyright © The Authors 2020
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Notes
1 More updated testing data in Japan are available at Our World in Data and Toyo Keizai Online.
Also, LINE has announced it is collaborating with MHLW to conduct a massive COVID-19 symptom survey of its users in Japan. Initially limited to Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, Saitama, 160,000 people have responded in the initial survey.
(Links ccessed on March 29, 2020).