The Olympic flame went out in Japan on August 8, putting an end to the mysterious spectacle of the games at the time of the pandemic. When the Tokyo Olympics were postponed last year, organizers hoped they would become a symbol of how humanity had won covid-19. That hope proved premature. The games, held in empty stadiums in a climate of widespread public aversion, will likely be remembered as an example of how strange and restless life had become during the pandemic.
For Japan, Tokyo 2020 (as the organizers wanted to call the games anyway) will leave a controversial legacy. The country has recorded various firsts. His Olympic team collected 27 gold medals and 58 in total, two historic records for the country. It had the youngest gold medal winner ever, 13-year-old skateboarder Nishiya Momiji. And it reached new highs in its daily number of covid-19 cases, which topped 15,700 in the aftermath of the closing ceremony.
Many Japanese celebrated sporting triumphs, despite doubts expressed before the games started. Fans, given the ban on attending in person at most of the events, gathered outdoors to try and grab some images of the cycling or skateboarding competitions. This enthusiasm did not extend to the event as a whole or to its organizers, as Japanese executives had hoped. Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide an honorary gold medal, his government’s approval rate among the Japanese population has fallen below 35 percent, again a new record. .
Inside a bubble
The tensions were evident from the start. On the night of the opening, a long line of protesters marched through central Tokyo to the new Olympic stadium. During the quiet moments of the ceremony, their slogan “stop at the Olympics” rang out inside the mostly empty facility. Fans gathered not far away, on the same street, and watched the ceremony streamed on their smartphones or staring skyward, in the direction of the fireworks and drone shows that soared above the Stadium. For the duration of the competition, the Olympians shuttled between hotels and facilities, where they competed in front of small groups of volunteers, officials and journalists. References to games have disappeared in the host cities, and the large crowds and good humor that usually accompany such events have not been seen. “It’s all a bit lonely,” complained Iizuka Masaki, a sports pin collector who, last week, waited outside the heavily guarded gates at the Tokyo stadium, hoping to find partners from abroad with whom make exchanges.
The organizers welcomed the fact that, apparently, the games did not become an event responsible for a large spread of the virus, as some feared. More than fifty thousand people from more than two hundred nations arrived in Japan. Only 436 of them tested positive. Although some athletes – and the entire Greek artistic swimming team – had to give up because they tested positive, the competitions ran smoothly. Some athletes and a handful of organization officials have seen their credentials revoked for breaking protocol and wandering around the Olympic village. But so far no evidence has emerged linking these unwary Olympians to the viral foci spread across the country’s general population. Yet outside the Olympic bubble, the spread of the delta variant has put hospitals under pressure. The government ruled last week that only seriously ill or high-risk patients would be hospitalized. The others had to recover from home (deaths remained relatively low, thanks in part to high vaccination rates among the elderly). On August 2, the state of emergency in Tokyo and Okinawa was extended to four other prefectures.
Many public health experts believe the Olympics are one of the reasons for the resurgence of cases. Since the start of the pandemic, however, Japan’s ability to contain it has been based on the cooperation of the people. The government does not have the legal authority to impose strict confinements; his emergency statements amount, in essence, to a request for people to restrict their travel, and for businesses to close early and stop serving alcohol. The current state of emergency is the fourth of its kind and a certain fatigue has spread across the country.
The holding of the Olympics reinforced complacency. Pedestrian traffic, for example, has decreased much less during the current state of emergency than during the past ones. “Since the Olympics are held regularly, people think there is no problem getting out,” said Onishi Moeri, who joined a crowd taking photos next to the Olympic rings last week. As Iizuka said, “it was a very unusual Olympics”.
(Translation by Federico Ferrone)
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