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Japan: Naomi Osaka, a committed athlete who challenges in the archipelago

“We don’t mix sport and politics”: for part of the Japanese (extremists on the right in particular), an athlete does not have to commit. According to them, the Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka, mestizo of Japanese mother and Haitian father, committed a fault by supporting a call to demonstrate against racism and discrimination at the end of last week in the archipelago in Osaka. The homonymy between the place and his surname made the tweet a little ambiguous and the fact that it wrote (with a mistake) in Japanese “iM asking you” (for calling to protest) earned him a volley of criticism. “I’m disappointed” write some who expect athletes to perform well on the ground but refrain from taking any political position.

Endowed with a distributed and a sense of humor not very widespread in Japanese culture, the 22-year-old concerned replied scathingly: “I hate those who say that athletes should not be involved in politics and just entertain the public. First, it is a human rights issue. Second: how do you have more right than you to express yourself? With your logic, a person who works at Ikea just has the right to speak of Grönlid furniture. ”

Read also: Racism, the world revolt

Questioned by Release, political scientist Koichi Nakano, from Sophia University in Tokyo, explains that in Japan, we do not qualify as “Political remarks” with a pejorative connotation as positions that denounce a fact. It is allowed to glorify the authorities, but not to protest, especially when one is an influential figure “In this sense, employees are not supposed to express political opinions, specialists in this or that field should not go beyond their specialty and tennis players should be content to play tennis.” In fact, the most committed Japanese sportsmen (like baseball player Yu Darvish) are, like Naomi Osaka, based abroad.

A diversity hardly visible in Japan

If the champion received many sympathetic words from fans around the world, including Japan, she also received several salvos of derogatory remarks. Because his support for the organization of a “black lives matter” march could, according to these people, favor the transmission of Covid-19. “You annoy us, stop”, “you have a considerable influence, think before you speak”, we threw him on Twitter. Some have even gone so far as to give the list of its sponsors, presented as supporting a person who incites from abroad to spread a virus in Japan. In the archipelago, the power of advertisers is such that many athletes are encouraged not to make waves.

For others, it is unjustified to call to demonstrate in Japan, where diversity is hardly visible, because “The problem of racism towards black people does not arise in the archipelago”. This, at the risk of reinforcing the impression that the Japanese do not look beyond their borders and live apart from the rest of the planet: “Is there discrimination in Japan against black people? Do you not understand that demonstrating in regions where this kind of problem does not only annoy local people? ” Again Naomi Osaka reacted appropriately, recalling that she herself suffered from racist words uttered by Japanese humorists who had to apologize.

Karyn Nishimura à Tokyo

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