Pierre Boutier

TOKYO: Protesters denounced a Japan Olympic Committee program that aims to bring together 1.28 million children across Japan and 810,000 children from the Tokyo area to educate them on the values of Olympism and its charter, including sustainability.

In the program, the children will see Olympic events and the prefectures will pay for the tickets, one of the activists said.

Some have likened IOC chief Thomas Bach’s remark that “Everyone in the Olympic community has to make sacrifices to adapt to this unprecedented situation” as an echo of wartime and imperial rhetoric of the Showa era when Japan had to mobilize the nation in a spirit of sacrifice.

However, protesters objected to the mobilizing of children for the Olympics during the pandemic.

The Olympic program aims at telling children about sustainability and the values of Olympism, as well as raising their awareness of the value of effort and courage.