Tokyo Olympics – 80% Japanese want Olympics to be cancelled: A Kyodo News survey has found around 80 per cent of Japanese people want this year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo to be cancelled or postponed.
In the telephone poll, 35.3 per cent of those surveyed called for the cancellation of the Games and 44.8 per cent said there should be another postponement.
The survey was conducted as Japan struggles with a resurgence of COVID-19.
Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba entered into a state of emergency on Friday (January 8) due to the increase in cases.
The Japanese capital recorded 1,494 new coronavirus infections today, the sixth day in a row the daily number of cases has exceeded 1,000.
In an address to mark the start of 2021, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga vowed to hold a “safe and secure” Olympics in 2021 despite rising concern over the infection rate.
Critics have since claimed Suga was too slow in enacting a state of emergency, however, and the Kyodo News survey found a disapproval rate of 42.8 per cent for the Prime Minister.
The approval rate was found to be 41.3 per cent, down nine percentage points from the previous survey in December.
In addition, the declaration of the state of emergency was viewed as “too late” by 79.2 per cent of respondents, while nearly 78 per cent claimed it needed to be expanded to other areas.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are scheduled to run from July 23 to August 8, with the Paralympics due to follow from August 24 to September 5.
