Emperor's Olympic opening declaration mirrors divided public

He should have used 弔う. Or at least 我慢する。

For anybody with eve a little grasp on the situation it is obvious these are not times for celebrating, much less to hold an international event in a city under a State of Emergency. The role of the imperial family makes it impossible to just go against the government on this, but at least some hint of consideration can be shown.

A shame that the English translation choose to contradict completely this very intentional choice of words.

I believe that a lot of Japanese perfectly understood the subtle nuances in the Emperor's speech, unfortunately these nuances will be lost to the international crowd.

Yep. Several people I spoke to yesterday asked if I had seen it (I hadn’t) and all of them talked about “celebrate” being left out specifically. I am yet to see any international news or hear from any friends abroad about it.

But Yasuhiro Sakaue, a professor at Hitotsubashi University who has written extensively on the intersection of sports and politics, warned that if the games cause a spike in COVID-19 cases it could damage the integrity of the imperial family.

I disagree with this. It would have been better if the emperor stayed away, I agree, but only because it’s clear that the event is a farce and the public are not taken into account for any of the decisions made whatsoever. However, the public know what is going on, and the imperial family’s integrity will remain intact. IOC, JOC, LDP… that’s a different story.

I bet that all the countries that lost holding the Olympics to Tokyo are now really glad that they lost.

Did anyone else notice that PM Suga was asleep when the Emperor started his speech? Had to be nudged by a handler to standup.

Did anyone else notice that there is zero international news about this, yet Japanese twitter has 100s of 1000s of tweets?

Did anyone else notice the survey on Yahoo that says that 80% of Japanese found the opening ceremony the best ever? And that very few international news agencies have published any pieces.

If you want to see a pro at work, search for the video of the emperor greetings Bach.

Watch how the Emperor dissed Bach in a public but oh so subtle way.

The Emperor faces Bach gives barely a head nod then literally turns away before Bach bows Bach.

Watching Bach bow to the already turned Emperor that is clearly ignoring him is priceless.

If you want to see a pro at work, search for the video of the emperor greetings Bach.

But even more real pro would have been to not even let come nearer or receive such a nothing.

There’s always a choice. He could have given the patronage to someone else some weeks ago, camouflaged as a big celebration or thank you to someone famous etc. Or he good even have given only a very short greeting message to be read only by someone else of the palace or Imperial family and have himself excused absent for any unnamed reasons or of summer heat, small cold, stomach upset from too much seafood the day before or anything like that , so it doesn’t worry the public much but shows his opinions or feelings without explicitly saying it loudly and everyone immediately realizes the real situation.

No, he has a lot of authority, but he chose not to use it.

@blue

Yes you are correct, the needle has moved significantly. I suspect (pure speculation) that Yahoo pre-loaded the survey with positive results to get the thing started. Otherwise it makes no sense on why the needle would move so far in 24 hours.