The earliest machinations of the bidding process for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics date back to the early 2000s and Japan’s desire to hold a second coming-out party. Japan put in bids for the 2012 Summer Olympics (London) and 2016 (Rio de Janeiro), finally succeeding in 2013 when they were awarded the 2020 edition. It was not without a sense of alarm, as it involved a last-second political play by then Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. He flew to Buenos Aires to reassure the International Olympic Committee over ill-timed reports of new leaks at the power plant in Fukushima hit by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Tokyo first held the Summer Olympics in 1964, billed as a coming-out party for the nation after the second world war. Now, on the heels of a global pandemic, Japan finds itself trying to turn the Games into a soft power win for the ages. The term ‘soft power’ was first coined by American political scientist Joseph Nye and is described as a nation’s ability to shape its image on an international level through positive means. “What’s interesting is the generation that is in power right now, including (Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide) Suga, would remember those Games and how important they were for Japan from the mid-60s, right up until the mid-80s and even later,” said Jack Anderson, the director of Sports Law Studies at the University of Melbourne. “And the whole idea behind bidding for these Games back in 2013 was to mark an economic revival for Japan in terms of the economy having stagnated in the ‘90s. So it was to mark that, and also to mark Japan’s resilience in the face of many natural disasters and (Fukushima), so it was kind of sold as a reset for Japan in many ways.” Suga, who succeeded Abe in September 2020 after he fell ill, while also taking the reins of the Liberal Democratic Party, finds himself trying to carry on his successor’s intended legacy through an unprecedented curveball. Who are Asia’s top gold medal hopes at Olympic Games? “This is survival mode right now for Suga,” said Lindsay Meredith, professor emeritus in marketing for Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business in Canada. “His whole party and Abe and the crowd preceding him, this was billed as Japan’s coming-out party and it was all going to be a part of this, ‘Hey, we’re in the front seat and everybody pay attention to us, and look at the new us’.” Meredith said the current situation is supercharged given the next country to host an Olympics is Japan’s long-standing Asian rival. China overtook Japan in terms of GDP in 2010, something he said should not be underestimated when it comes to the soft power battle between the two. “There is not a lot of love lost between these two nations,” said Meredith, who noted that relations have soured in the past few years over a number of geopolitical issues including Japan’s alignment with the US on Taiwan, Hong Kong and the South China Sea. “And if you look at GDP numbers, Japan was always number two right behind America, and now, in almost all categories, China has bumped them out, and that message has not been lost on the Japanese hierarchy. And I get a feeling there is a little bit of jealousy there, and I get the sense this animal is actually more politically driven than economically driven.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tokyo 2020 (@tokyo2020) Beijing will become the first city to host two Games when it stages the 2022 Winter Olympics, which kick off on February 4. The Covid-19 pandemic has added a new component to the soft power war between Japan and China. The Chinese Communist Party has used the pandemic as a sign of its government’s supremacy in handling internal issues as its propaganda machine touts the country’s case numbers and lockdown strategy in contrast to a number of nations, including the US and Japan. The fact that Tokyo 2020 was postponed to 2021 because of Covid-19, and is now in a state or emergency during the Games, has to be factored into a CCP eager to showcase its pandemic response and strategy to the world in less than seven months. China’s hosting of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was seen as a massive soft power win and its own coming-out party. However, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy’s “The Soft Power 30” report has Japan ranked eighth and China 27th. According to the report’s findings, China’s biggest weakness is its governance structure, but the analysis also called China a “growing cultural juggernaut”. Tokyo 2020 also comes at a precarious time for Japanese politics as an election will take place next year and Suga’s leadership will be tested. Simon Chadwick, a professor of Eurasian Sport at the Emlyon Business School, said Suga’s predecessor was banking on a soft power boost before the pandemic came into the picture. “Abe anticipated that he would have to fight an election fairly soon after the Games had finished,” said Chadwick. “And so he believed there would be an economic bounce and also a ‘feel good’ factor inside Japan, so this was his play. He was very supportive of the Games going ahead because he thought it would benefit him electorally and Suga feels the same way because he’s also got an election to fight and he’s also very keen to use this soft power win to help get the current government reelected.” Chadwick said this also plays into Sino-Japanese relations, which will be a part of the 2021 Japanese election campaign as Suga looks to assert himself as a leader both at home and abroad. “China has essentially put Japan in the economics shadow, so the Games were seen as a way for Japan to regain some sort of parity.” ‘Anti-sex’ beds claims at Tokyo Olympics Julianne Piper, the project coordinator for the Pandemics & Borders Project, an international research group built around data and analysis regarding the adoption and lifting of cross-border measures to control pandemics, said there are a few issues Japan has to overcome if it wants the world to declare the Games a success. “The vaccination rate is definitely a concern,” said Piper. About 22 per cent of Japanese people have had two doses. “You can look at the UK (54 per cent), their vaccination rate is quite high and they are still struggling with the Delta variant so I think there is an interesting juxtaposition of Japan going into a state of emergency while also getting ready to host this large sporting event.” Piper said time will tell if Japan can pull off the largest sporting event since the pandemic began, and if there will be an upside to Tokyo 2020. “That is definitely the positive side of this, in that it could serve as kind of a litmus test for managing international athletic events that bring people together from all over the world while Covid is still very present. “So if they can manage to keep the risk levels low, and manage to prevent infections from these events from spreading to the rest of the country and out into the world, I think it will be a big win. But there are still some questions around whether this is feasible.”