The situation upset many local residents, who were disgruntled at having to stay home while their taxes funded an event they were largely unable to enjoy – and which was feared as a potential catalyst for infections that could introduce new Covid-19 variants into Japan’s population. Restaurants and bars had been instructed to close by 8pm in accordance with Tokyo’s fourth state of emergency since the pandemic began, ordered by Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike just before the Games launched, in a desperate attempt to halt the spread of Covid-19 infections which were rising to record levels. The city’s famously dynamic nightlife was non-existent. There were hand-sanitiser dispensers in every shop. Elsewhere in Tokyo the streets were nearly empty. They were not there to watch the world’s elite athletes compete, however, but to enter a government-run Covid-19 vaccination centre. On Saturday 31st July, 2021, day eight of Tokyo’s Olympic Games, a queue of people snaked down the road alongside Yoyogi Park, just steps from Yoyogi National Stadium. Photo: Viola Kam/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Protesters call for the Olympics to be cancelled at a demonstration in Tokyo two months before the Games begin, 17th May 2021. “We’d like to do our best to live up to your expectations.” Nobody in that heady moment could have imagined how Tokyo’s Games would turn out. “The moment of truth is coming,” said then-Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in Buenos Aires. Tokyo 2020 was billed as the ‘Recovery and Reconstruction Games’, and its torch relay was set to begin in Fukushima as a “flame of recovery” for the disaster-hit region. Just as with the 1964 Olympics, which heralded the reemergence of Japan after its devastation during World War II, many felt that hosting the 2020 Games would have a transformative effect on the country.įor some, the news that the Games were coming to Tokyo was a welcome balm for nerves that were still frayed following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that struck the north-eastern Tōhoku region of Japan in March 2011, killing 20,000 people, injuring 6,000 more and displacing nearly half a million from their homes. Thousands of residents had stayed up for all-night viewing parties to watch the result announced at 5.20am local time. When the news broke in the Japanese capital that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had selected it as host city for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the reaction was equally jubilant. Normally stoic black-suited men jumped up and down and frantically hugged each other. On Saturday 7th September 2013, the Japanese delegation at the Hilton Buenos Aires erupted in joy as the name Tokyo was read out.
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