With Australia having announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday, pressure is mounting on Japan as it attempts to walk a fine line between the U.S. and its top trading partner, China.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno reiterated Wednesday that no decisions have been made regarding Japan’s Olympic delegation following the announcement of Washington’s boycott, which will see government officials skip the Winter Games scheduled for February but won’t affect the participation of athletes.
“The government will make its own decision at an appropriate time, taking into account a comprehensive range of issues,” he said.
But a report by the Sankei daily the same day indicated that Tokyo is already sorting out who to send to the Games and that members of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Cabinet may sit them out.
The government is considering sending lower-level officials to the Games instead, with Koji Murofushi, director-general of the Sports Agency, and Yasuhiro Yamashita, president of the Japanese Olympic Committee, proposed as potential delegates, according to the paper.
That would match China’s delegation for the Tokyo Olympics this summer, when Gou Zhongwen, director of China’s sports administration and Chinese Olympic Committee president, attended a subdued opening ceremony in Tokyo that many world leaders opted to skip due to the pandemic.
Still, a Japanese delegation that doesn’t include a member of the Cabinet would be a far cry from the 2018 Winter Games, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and met with President Moon Jae-in.
The nature of the discussions outlined in the Sankei report highlight the difficult position Japan finds itself in as it seeks to find a happy medium amid growing tensions between the world’s top two economies and as human rights activists put more pressure on the country to call out Beijing over its alleged human rights violations.
Teppei Kasai, a program officer for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said after the U.S. announcement that Japan “should follow suit by announcing a diplomatic boycott of the Games as soon as possible,” while also urging Tokyo to “simultaneously coordinate with like-minded governments to investigate and map out pathways to accountability” over what Washington has said are China’s human rights “atrocities.”
Even some ruling party lawmakers have urged Kishida to go ahead with a diplomatic boycott.
On Tuesday, conservative Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers submitted a proposal saying Japan should announce a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Games if China fails to improve the its human rights situation.
Kishida has taken a tougher line on China than many observers had expected, calling Beijing out over its stance on Taiwan, creating a new human rights advisory post and…
Read More: Japan faces delicate balance over Beijing Olympics boycott