Angry ‘Olympic Ojisan’ leaves Beijing
Sankei/MSN reports that Naotoshi Yamada, an 82 year-old super fan famously fan known as “Olympic Ojisan” because of his energetic cheering at past Olympic games, has left the Beijing Olympics in anger.
When asked by the press about his reasons for leaving, he said that he was shocked by the bad way Chinese authorities treated visitors. Yamada claims that many Japanese fans were not allowed to attend Judo matches, despite a large number of empty seats in the arena. He attended many Olympic games over the last 50 or so years, and it was the first time he’d encountered anything like this.
Yamada was also angry about the behavior of Chinese fans at sporting events, as well as the air quality:
The booing was outrageous. There’s never been an Olympic Games like this one. They aren’t qualified to hold the Olympics. Moreover, the air was dirty, causing pain in my throat. This will be the first time I’ve gone to the Olympics and not stayed until the Closing Ceremony.
One could easily blow off Yamada’s complaints as the rantings of a loony old man, but he’s not the only one complaining about empty venues turning away fans, nor is he the only source to mention booing from Chinese fans (China’s state-controlled press has claimed otherwise). On the other hand, footage of the city and media reports show that Beijing’s smog levels are quite low compared to what had been expected before the games.
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I come here to read news related to things happening in Japan, but recently, the only things I see are anti-Chinese rants that sometimes are not true. Even the Western media that heavily criticizes China did not mention the booing at the Olympic Games.
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Wayne, the story is about Mr. Yamada, so it’s entirely on-topic. I’ve watched the Olympics a lot on TV and I’ve heard booing a few times. Whether or not that justifies charges of “not qualified” to hold the Olympics, I don’t know. And as far as air quality goes, I’m not in a position to tell from my living room.
Does anyone know how Mr. Yamada can afford to attend all these sporting events? I can’t help but notice he manages to appear at every single day of every single sumo tournament, usually down in front in the expensive seats.
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Looks like Yamada-san is one cashed up dude!
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He owns a capsule hotel near Tokyo Station.
http://www.naniwa1001.co.jp/first/first_english.htm
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I’ll second most of feitclub’s points. As for air quality, it does seem that it has been better on certain days than normal, but this is not really surprising considering the sizable jump in restrictions that were enforced a week or two prior to the opening ceremonies (on top of prior efforts to tone down the air pollution). They have also been very fortunate to have received at least a small amount of rain in the past week. On the other end, however, it does seem rather obvious that NBC has turned up the color saturation levels on certain broadcasts to counteract smog for certain events like the marathon run.
As for your claims regarding the Western media, I would have to say that my impressions have been quite the opposite. There has undoubtedly been some degree of criticism but from the countless stories I’ve seen and read it seems these criticisms are more often than not mentioned as side-notes or are quickly followed by stories of “The Olympic Spirit.” In fact, when you think of how astoundingly pathetic a state the Western media currently finds itself in, I’d have to say that they are going very easy on the Chinese government considering how willing they (the Western media) are to over-blow moronic stories about flag lapel pins and Britney Spears.
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“Even the Western media that heavily criticizes China did not mention the booing at the Olympic Games.”
Funny, it was mentioned in some of the Western media I read…
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Uh, maybe because the booing is aimed at Japanese?
Of course the Western media doesn’t care about booing against Japan. But if Chinese were booing the Americans, it would be a huge story.
Surely you should understand this, as you yourself claim to enjoy reading news about Japan so much.
But, once a again, a pro-Chinese netizen manages to be the first responder on a post that criticizes China…
Guess I’ll just say it’s suspicious and go no further.
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One of the links goes to an article about the fans booing the US badminton team. First I’d heard of it… so assuming it would be a “huge” story… not so much.
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Wow, didn’t even notice..but then does anyone notice badminton?
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I’ll second Li, the coverage is pretty biased. I’ve had a few friends travel to beijing just for the olympics and they said that it was fantastic.
My suggestion is for people to try and look up a position from the other side…that doesn’t mean a different article from CNN.
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You mean like the official Chinese accounts of how they faked the opening fireworks in part because the air quality was so bad they wouldn’t have shown up well on TV…
Or how they used two girls to sing the national anthem as one was cute but couldn’t sing well enough and the other could sing but wasn’t cute enough…
Or how they didn’t use actual ethnic minorities in their parade of kids from the 57 ethnic groups of China…
Or how they are using a 13 year old on the gymnastics team…
You’re right. Look at it from the Chinese side. They do enough damage without any “big noses” even getting involved.
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I’m not saying some of the stuff isn’t staged, but this kind of thing happens all the time.
1) The fireworks thing is reasonable. Say they had rain that day and the haze prevented a reasonable display of fireworks to the television viewer. The thing you missed in these articles is that the fireworks display DID go on and that they “staged it” only on television in order to give the audience a similar experience.
There’s a lot more that goes in catching fireworks on television effectively…if you’ve ever been to a bunch of fireworks displays, I’m sure you’ve figured that out from your digital camera over the years and weather conditions.
2) I’m pretty sure if you look at ANY pop music, you’ll see why I don’t care. That kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME.
3) I’ll give you the gymnastics things on suspicion…but also, that has happened many times before with other countries. Even then, the better gymnasts were the Chinese in my opinion, regardless of age.
The difference here is really the press coverage. In a kind of related post, it’s similar to the whole tibet issue around the olympics. I’ve not ONCE seen an article stateside that shows a Chinese perspective.
Plus, when it all breaks down to it…who cares about theatrics? It’s about sport.
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–”That kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME.”
Yes. Just ask Mili Vanilli how much it boosted their reputation. This is not Madonna lip-synching to her own song as as to have the energy to dance around the stage in a show.
–”Even then, the better gymnasts were the Chinese in my opinion, regardless of age.”
Yes, and small boys make good coalminers too. Their ability is not the issue. Younger bodies have an unfair advantage in being more flexible, but too young means there are concerns the physical stresses might damage them. That is why the limit was set at 16.
–”who cares about theatrics? It’s about sport.”
That’s backwards: “who cares about sport? It’s about theatrics.”
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Ref the lip syncing, yes, people lipsync their own material all the time, in pop music. But if you lip sync someone elses voice, and present it as your own, and get caught, you go down in flames.
And lip syncing some other little girl’s voice, because she WASN’T CUTE ENOUGH to be on TV is pretty screwed up, and antithetical to the so-called “Olympic spirit” of ability and talent that the games are supposed to, but rarely do, represent.
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Actually most of the Chinese competitors aren’t real Olympians: those were thought to be too ugly, so instead they use wires and trick photography to replicate their actions with cuter people.
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Comparing entertainment-related “enhancements” and competition-related changes should really stop.
One can feel free to criticize China for making poor decisions related to the opening ceremonies (if you even consider them to be), but it has no bearing on the actual competition.
Altering ages to get younger athletes into the games is a totally different story, however. This is the same as doping and should be investigated by the IOC and dealt with accordingly.
The Olympics are full of trickery to make them more entertaining; just take a look at Athens and the magic arrow to light the torch. The opening/closing ceremonies are a live production much like a broadway musical or a play and criticizing a host country for making the production more “entertaining” seems silly to me.
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Thank you… I guarantee you that most of the people that have negative views about China have never been there before. My girlfriend and I basically go back every year and we always have a great time. It’s the same thing as food… how can you criticize it if you haven’t tried it?
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Studied there for a full academic year. It took me two months to stop coughing and another couple of months to get the taste out of my mouth. That said, I highly recommend it as a training ground for the scientists charged with making first contact with extraterrestrials. It will give them experience in dealing with an alien culture that has no common “stepping stones” with anything Earthlings would recognize.
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I’ve never been to Nazi Germany, so I won’t criticize it.
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If your friends were allowed to attend the matches, there would be no complaints, but I sympathise the fans who “were not allowed to attend Judo matches, despite a large number of empty seats in the arena”.
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Not surprised. China do not know how to treat visitors.
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Yeah, and Japan does by not allowing foreigners to enter certain restaurants.
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No no,rather, Japan does by not allowing foreigners to enter certain brothels. in general restaurants welcome foreigners, some small restaurants don’t welcome customers other than frequenters because there are a few seats at the shop and the owner do not want to reject the frequenter because of a new customer.
Could you tell me which restaurant are you talking about?
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Names, dates and times, please? This isn’t that other blog where you can throw out any old accusation safe in the knowledge evidence to the contrary will be buried by the moderator and never see the light of day.
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It was posted here a while ago, that some Japanese restaurants were not allowing foreigners. Just take a look through the previous posts
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That was one restaurant in Tsukiji. It was also found that that was not use to xenophobia but language issues, and thanks to the help of people on this forum the issue was actually cleared up. Yes, there are some places that don’t allow foreigners, and while some may excuse that by saying they’re not on the whole places foreigners would want to go, that is no excuse in my book. However they are a vanishingly small minority, despite what certain deadbeatos might claim.
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Overthinker and Ponta are correct-
I don’t recall posting about “some restaurants” not allowing foreigners, but instead one restaurant, which took down its sign after someone explained the situation to them:
http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=3775
I’ve never personally encountered a restaurant that didn’t welcome foreigners. I have seen a few places that did have “Japanese only” signs, but all of those were shady hostess clubs or brothels, which I wouldn’t be interested in visiting anyway.
Wayne Li, you aren’t helping your cause by starting these kinds of arguments. I have been to China and I understand the values that these people are raised upon. I don’t blame China for staging all of these events. For everyone who is complaining about China’s actions these people need to analyze the situation more carefully. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for China. The Olympics may never happen in China again so they need to make the best impression. Sure, no one is perfect, but atleast they try. Think about America, they were founded on the ideals of freedom. China was not. Sure the the switch with the girl may sound horrible, but look at all the musicians in America. Do they not try and look their best? It may sound wrong to Americans, but to the Chinese it is a necessity. A because China is soon to be the leading economic leader in the world they want to attract as many people as possible. I hope that everyone here is able to accept the believes of another culture.
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“Sure the the switch with the girl may sound horrible, but look at all the musicians in America. Do they not try and look their best?”
You’ve missed the point. With very few exceptions, the people you see singing are the people actually singing, even if it’s lip synching to a pre-recorded track. When musicians in the US are caught faking it like this, they are scorned. This isn’t about looking good, this is about faking it. We accept in movies that the actresses may be dubbed for singing, but when we see an actual person, the assumption is that they are more than a puppet.
Can’t see why China would think they would never get another Olympics.
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Been there and I still maintain it was wrong to give them the Olympics, though I based that on human rights concerns.
In reality they shouldn’t have gotten it because they are making fools of themselves the way they are handling protests, roughing up journalists, booing or being dead quiet to Japan, the girl not being cute enough, increased repression the fakes in the ceremonies, etc.
China shouldn’t have gotten it because they are embarassing themselves.
The air still looks like crap, and everyone knows it – despite the fact that they did so much to make it look better for OTHER PEOPLE. Not their own citizens who suffer repiratory problems, they did it to show the world that…. they don’t care about their own people?
I don’t see why Chinese people would defend a country that thinks so little of their own people that they will give their own people a short health respite all for a propaganda show aimed at foreigners.
If I truly cared for the Chinese people more than others, as the Pro PRC crowd does I’d reevaluate my own support of the Olympics because we clearly see that the best interests of the Chinese aren’t being considered.
Not that I expect the Pro PRC crowd to have any sort of logical consistency whatsoever.
It seems the Pro PRCers care more about some elusive image of a great China and less about the people.
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Amen hadji. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Once the Olympics end and a year or two has passed, China will continue to treat its people like crap and China won’t care because no one is looking.
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This story doesn’t surprise me at all. I knew it was going to be bad when the Japanese media reported that during Japan’s entrance to the games, the crowd was entirely quiet. A majority of Chinese still hate Japanese people for the crap that happened 60 years ago. One side of my family was in Hiroshima during the bombing. Alot of my family died and my dad’s side was imprisoned in the internment camps in California but I don’t revile the US. The people involved in the war are either dead or going to die soon. Chinese/Korean/Japanese nationalists need to stop fighting each other because our generation had absolutely nothing to do with the fighting all those years ago.
And finally in response to Wayne Li, the Western media hasn’t reported on booing because the US hasn’t been booed yet. I think you know that Chinese people hate Japanese people more.
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You have to understand, many of those who experienced war crimes committed by the Japanese are still alive, and that is why the elderly in China still have a grudge against Japan. Sure, Hiroshima was a horrible event, but most of them just vanished without the pain and suffering the Chinese had to endure. I love the different cultures of all countries w/o being biased, but the truth is, Japan invaded China because they needed resources and in the process disregarding the rules of warfare.
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@ Wayne: I don’t think there are any “rules of warfare” as you say. When it comes to war, there are no ethical guidelines as to how a country should invade another.
Also, China’s grudge against Japan was especially nurtured in the 90s to divert the public’s dissatisfaction with the Chinese government – to unite the people against an outside enemy instead. Before this movement, the Chinese perception of Japan was quite positive. The Japanese language was taught on public TV, and many students went to Japan to study.
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Wandering off topic here but: There are indeed rules in war. The Geneva conventions is the international standard, and it covers a whole lot more than the treatment of POWs/captured enemy (although that is where it gets the most press). Most countries also have some form of military legal code that makes actions in violation of the Conventions punishable in military courts. I do not know what military laws governing the conduct of soldiers existed in Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, but they did exist in some form and doubtless prohibited certain kinds of conduct on and off the battlefield – to what extent they were enforced is another debate. Japan during this time was not, however, a signatory to the Geneva conventions.
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“”Also, China’s grudge against Japan was especially nurtured in the 90s to divert the public’s dissatisfaction with the Chinese government”"
How mislead you were… but I don’t blame you, history textbooks in Japan do downplay the shameful actions of the Japanese during the invasion of Nanjing.
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What Asuka said is true. In the early 90ies when the comfort women began to become a big diplomatic issue between Japan and South Korea, and as a huge number of student street protests appeared in the street of Seoul,basically every chinese student around me laughed about the Korean students.
“Look, they are still grudging about what happened a long time ago,and what even happened long before they were born.”
I asked a Chinese student whether it could be possible that this will happen in the near future in China. He said to me “No”. He said that the Chinese are more confident about themselfs and have overgone old grudges.
All changed after Deng Shao-pin died, and Jiang Zhi-min came to power.
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“history textbooks in Japan do downplay the shameful actions of the Japanese during the invasion of Nanjing.”
Tokyo Shoseki (perhaps the single biggest publisher of high school history texts), on p. 139 of the 2006 edition of Nihonshi A, notes that:
———–
At this time [the occupation of Nanking], many Chinese, including non-combatants, were killed in the Nanking Incident*
*It is said that over 100,000 civilians (ippan juumin), including women, as well as prisoners of war, were killed, and the world paid attention at the time, but the people of Japan had no knowledge. This Nanking Massacre was harshly dealt with in the postwar Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.
———–
More significantly, the Teacher’s Edition of the same textbook dedicates an entire page to the Nanking Massacre (using that title). In particular, the postwar historiography of it.
Unit 731 has an entire sidebar dedicated to it on p.147. The same page also mentions Asian resistence efforts and the illegal use of poison gas against resistors. And it doesn’t ignore Comfort Women either.
You could certainly consider this “downplaying,” but while it is not gone into in much detail (that’s a common issue for all topics in school textbooks, however), it is hardly ignored or made light of. True, a Chinese will claim the figure is more like 300,000 than 100,000, but there are serious issues with that figure (see the analysis by David Askew in ‘Japan Focus’). However, as he notes, much of the debate depends on definitions of “civilian” and “city area” and even the time period used. This is far too complex for a high school textbook.
One textbook that does downplay it is the Tsukurai one, which mentions (p199 of the 2005 revised edition), “At this time, many Chinese soldiers and people were killed and wounded by the Japanese Army (Nanking Incident). Note that there are many questions concerning the actual nature of this incident in the documentation, and many interpretations: the debate continues to this day.” However the Tsukurai textbook is barely used in high schools.
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Hi Wayne. China invaded Tibet.
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“I love the different cultures of all countries w/o being biased”? Do you actually believe this, or is irt just that it sounds kind of good and cosmopolitan and tolerant, even though it’s vacuous? Do you actually expect anyone else to believe it? You might get a little more respect for your pro-Chinese views if you were more honest about the fact that they are indeed pro-Chinese views.
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This is exactly my point. Its good for countries to remember history and ensure that such things never happen again. I’m fine with the elderly having whatever opinions they have. They were the ones that experienced it first-hand. What I don’t understand is why there is a resurgence of nationalism in East Asia. When people of our generation (I’m 20) get instigated and start hating each other because of World War II, it just seems ridiculous. Anybody under at least 50 years old doesn’t have the right to blindly hate Japan or China for things that happened before they were born. Its like if I hated the grandson of the guy who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It doesn’t accomplish anything because he has nothing to do with his grandfather’s actions.
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I completely agree with you… I think all grudges lingering from past political relationships should be forgotten for those who did not experience it first hand.
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So how can grudges be forgotten if you continue to whine about World War II, 65 years after it happened?
I’m willing to forget the rape and murder of Tibet and the invasion of Vietnam if you will forgive Japan.
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I just want to say the Chinese Gymnastics look younger then 16 years old Girls.
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and they emphasize there was rape of nanking. yes, perfect!
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This thread has followed the classic meme that any internet discussion will always eventually arrive at either Hitler or genocide.
The problem with the lip synching girl was they gave no credit to the real singer. This was a state hosted event, and they paraded this girl in front of billions of people and exploited the non-cute one. It’s simply dishonest and exploitive to these girls. Doesn’t matter if it were China, the USA, or some other country. It’s still a mistake. That said, I’d rather let China save face and move on because they’re trying to improve – I’m just not going to pretend what they did was okay when it’s brought up.
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I dont know guys about that, but Seoul and Tokyo was without any doubt the most wonderful Olimpic Games in Asia.
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