The Tokyo Olympics are in big trouble. Postponed by a year and slated to begin in July, the Olympics have become a political flash point in Japan, where almost 60 percent of the population opposes staging the Games this summer and where less than 2 percent of the population is vaccinated for Covid-19.
The International Olympic Committee, local Olympic organizers and Japan’s ruling party maintain that the Games must go on, even amid pandemic conditions. As Covid cases surged in Japan in January, Thomas Bach, the I.O.C.’s president, said he had “no reason whatsoever to believe that the Olympic Games in Tokyo will not open on July 23.