JAPAN’S ambitions for a trouble-free 2020 Tokyo Olympics to showcase the country’s economic revival are facing an unexpected obstacle course as planners lurch from one fiasco to the next.

    The 2020 Games were dubbed the clinching “fourth arrow” of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ambitious strategy to restore Japan’s star stature after two decades of economic doldrums.

    Last week, organizers scrapped their Olympics logo, saying it was withdrawn by the designer due to allegations of plagiarism. That followed Abe’s decision in July to drop a gargantuan new national stadium design that critics likened to a bicycle helmet, reducing the project to cut its cost by over a third.

    The setbacks coincided with mediocre economic data and with massive public protests against legislation that will give the military more leeway for involvement in armed conflicts.

    Even the Yomiuri newspaper, which usually cheers Abe and his policies, described the scandal over the logo as a “big blunder.” The Tokyo organizing committee, the committee that chose the logo and designer Kenjiro Sano all shared responsibility for the logo mess, Olympics Minister Toshiaki Endo told lawmakers yesterday.

    (SD-Agencies)