Outbreak, economic ills dim luster of Japan’s Olympic year
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should be basking in the limelight this year in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Instead, the virus outbreak that has spread from China to even remote parts of Japan has Abe and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party playing defense.
Abe has skated through numerous scandals since taking office in late 2012, promising to “Make Japan Great Again.” A relatively strong economy, robust share prices and the absence of strong political rivals have enabled him to hang on as the country’s longest-serving prime minister, with a solid majority coalition.
But at a time when the country should be gearing up for the mass celebration of its first Summer Olympics since 1964, Abe and his government are battling criticism from both within and outside Japan over how they’ve dealt with the outbreak. That’s particularly true of Tokyo’s handling of the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship stuck in quarantine off the coast of
Yokohama as growing numbers of its 3,700 passengers and crew fell sick or were evacuated.
Japan’s economy contracted 6.3% in the last quarter of 2019, after an Oct. 1 sales tax hike dented demand at a time when exports already were languishing thanks to the China-U.S. trade war and trade friction between Tokyo and neighboring South Korea. The boost that Abe got from soaring stock prices early in his first term, when the Nikkei 225 share index more than doubled in 2013-2015, has faded with the index on a plateau for the past two years.
With the virus outbreak, tourism has nosedived with cancellations of tens of thousands of flights. Chinese tourists, the mainstay of regional travel with nearly 10 million visiting Japan in 2019, are staying away now that the virus has spread beyond the cruise ship to Okinawa, Wakayama and other relatively remote parts of the country as well as Tokyo.
“A multitude of things are going wrong simultaneously, not just for Abe but for Japan as a whole,” said Michael Cucek, assistant professor for Asian Studies at Temple
University in Tokyo. “It’s a concatenation of things.”
As of Friday, Japan had reported three deaths and 739 cases of the new virus, including 634 from the cruise ship. The last cruise ship passengers testing negative for the virus were due to disembark after a prolonged quarantine on board that drew criticism given the tight quarters and difficulty of isolating sick people from the healthy. Six health workers, including government officials, contracted the virus, raising questions about the effectiveness of protective measures used.
“Basically the quarantine of a ship is a 19th century type of a strategy. But it was probably hard to make any kind of a decision,” said Hitoshi Oshitani, a virology professor at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine. “The cruise ship issue is getting bigger and bigger as a political issue.”
The coronavirus crisis hit home just as Abe’s supporters were gearing up to try to change the rules to allow him a fourth threeyear term after his current term ends next year. As the numbers affected by the virus have risen, his popularity ratings have fallen.