Asia Times: Tokyo 2020 seeks to survive the Olympic curse

Asia Times: Tokyo 2020 seeks to survive the Olympic curse
July 16, 2020 sdcpm
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By TorchStone Asia Specialist, Howard Snyder

“It’s a problem that’s happened every 40 years – it’s the cursed Olympics,” Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso remarked before a parliamentary committee last March. Aso had a point. The 1940 Summer and Winter Olympics, scheduled to be held in Tokyo and Sapporo, respectively, were canceled due to World War II. Forty years later, the United States and 64 other countries boycotted the 1980 Moscow Summer Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Now, as we approach the one-year countdown to the postponed and rescheduled Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, how will the “40 year curse” affect Tokyo 2020 and beyond?