TOKYO (AP) – Seiko Hashimoto appeared in seven Olympic Games – four Winter Olympic Games and three Summer Olympic Games. According to historian Dr. Bill Mallon, his seven appearances are the most by any “multi-season” athlete in the games.
Hashimoto made even more history on Thursday in Japan, where women are still rare in boardrooms and positions of political power.
Hashimoto, 56, was named chairman of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee after a meeting of its executive board, which is 80% male. She replaces Yoshiro Mori, 83, a former Japanese prime minister who was forced to resign last week after making sexist comments about women.
Essentially, he said that women talk too much.
“Now I’m here to repay what I owe as an athlete and to repay what I received,” she told the board, through a Japanese interpreter.
Hashimoto served as an Olympic minister in Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s office. She also created a portfolio that dealt with gender equality and women’s empowerment. She said she would be replaced as an Olympic minister by Tamayo Marukawa.
She raised the issue of gender by speaking to almost all male audiences. Although the leader is now a woman, the issue of gender inequality in Japan remains.
“As a background to my selection, I understand that there is a factor related to gender parity,” she said. She said she hoped to work on the subject, but was not specific.
Hashimoto competed in three Summer Olympics (’88, ’92 and ’96) in cycling and four Winter Olympics (’84, ’88, ’92 and ’94) in speed skating. She won a bronze medal – her only medal – in 1992, at 1,500 meters in speed skating.
Japan’s Naomi Osaka, talking about Hashimoto after her tennis semifinal victory over Serena Williams at the Australian Open, said “you are seeing the younger generation not tolerating many things”.
“I feel it is very good because you are moving forward, barriers are being broken, especially for women. We had to fight for so many things just to be equal. Even in many things we are still not the same. “
The new president is linked to the Olympics in several ways. She was born in Hokkaido, in northern Japan, just five days before the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. Her name “Seiko” comes from “seika”, which translates to English Olympic flame.
According to reports widely circulated in Japan, Hashimoto was reluctant to accept the position and was one of three final candidates considered by a selection committee led by Fujio Mitarai, 85, of the camera company Canon.
The selection committee met for three consecutive days, a hasty appointment with the Olympics postponed opening in just over five months, in the middle of a pandemic and facing a myriad of problems.
Surveys show that around 80% of Japanese people want the Olympics to be canceled or postponed again. There is a fear of bringing tens of thousands of athletes and others to Japan, which controlled the coronavirus better than most countries.
There is also opposition to rising costs.
The official cost is $ 15.4 billion, although several government audits they say the price is at least $ 25 billion, the most expensive Summer Olympics ever recorded, according to a study by the University of Oxford.
Naming a woman can be a major breakthrough for gender equality in Japan, where women are underrepresented on the boards and in politics. Japan ranks 121st among 153 countries in the World Economic Forum’s annual gender equality ranking.
Before leaving office, Mori tried to offer the job last week to Saburo Kawabuchi, 84, a former head of the country’s football federation. But news of the deal behind closed doors has been widely criticized by social media, Japanese talk shows and newspaper news.
Kawabuchi quickly withdrew from further considerations.
Hashimoto has his critics. In 2014, a Japanese magazine published photos of her hugging figure skater Daisuke Takahashi at a party during the Sochi Olympics, suggesting it was sexual harassment. Later, she apologized and Takahashi said he was not bothered.
Two other former Olympic athletes would also have competed for Mori: Yasuhiro Yamashita, the chairman of the Japanese Olympic Committee who won gold in judo in 1984, and Mikako Kotani, who won two bronze medals in the synchronized swimming at the 1988 Olympic Games Seoul.
Kotani is the sports director of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee. The leadership of this committee is dominated by men, who represent 80% of the executive board.
Japan began distributing vaccines on Wednesday, a critical move that could boost the Olympics. It is several months behind Britain, the United States and other countries.
Generalized vaccination is unlikely in Japan, when the Olympics start on July 23 with 11,000 athletes, followed by the Paralympics on August 24 with 4,400 athletes. The plan is to keep athletes in a “bubble” in the Athletes’ Village, on the premises and in the training areas. The IOC said it would not require “participants” to be vaccinated, but encouraged it.
In addition to athletes, tens of thousands of employees, media, sponsors and announcers will also have to enter Japan. Many of them will operate outside the “bubble” in an Olympics that will be boosted by television and the billions that the IOC receives from the sale of transmission rights.
The first challenge for Hashimoto could be to remove the torch relay that begins on March 25 in northeastern Japan. It will cross the country with some 10,000 runners and end at the opening ceremony in Tokyo.
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