Japan: How to Keep the Olympics Clean

During Tokyo's International Sports Week, a sort of rehearsal for next year's Olympics, autograph hounds be sieged athletes from 34 nations at the highly respectable Dai Ichi Hotel. Many of the proffered "autograph albums," however, displayed not space for signatures but fetching photographs and the invitation: "There's a lovely girl waiting for you outside."

The incident sorely embarrassed the authorities, and deepened a growing concern in Toyo No Kunshi Koku (the Oriental Country of Virtuous Men) over the kind of image that Japan will present to Olympic visitors. For reasons of face,...

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