People's Daily: Sun, Dec 3 2006 2:20 PM
Although being regarded as a traditional sports power in Asia, Japan's performance was not as strong as those of China and South Korea in recent Asian Games. Japanese media attributed the phenomenon to the lack of encouragement mechanismhttp://english.people.com.cn/200612/03/eng20061203_327747.html....Although bounties do not directly link to players' performance, Japanese sports authority, for its negligence on economic stimulant, has definitely failed to further promote players' impassion sports sources were quoted as saying.

Manami Ishizaka on the uneven bars at the 15th Asian Games