The final image of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Closing Ceremony, in which the word "arigato" (thank you) was shown on a large screen, is seen at the Japan National Stadium, Tokyo, on Aug. 8, 2021. (Mainichi/Noriko Tokuno)
TOKYO -- It wasn't the Olympics Japan had imagined, but a promise was kept: The "omotenashi" hospitality trumpeted eight years ago when Tokyo's successful bid was confirmed was provided. Niek Kimmann, the men's BMX racing gold medalist, wrote on his Twitter account in Japanese: "I was moved by Japan's kind consideration."
Throughout the Games, athletes and conventional media communicated with the public via social networks. There were objections to the staging of the Olympics, but under the limited circumstances, volunteers for the Games and people in Japan gave the visitors a full welcome. British media said it was beautiful to see volunteers unobtrusively holding up cards at airports thanking people for coming to Japan. The greetings people took it upon themselves to give are a source of pride.
The newly incorporated Olympic event of skateboarding brought with it the sense of a new age, with young people overcoming the boundaries of countries and regions to compete as peers. The sights of athletes who couldn't train as they had intended to due to the coronavirus and giving their all under the punishing heat touched our hearts. Delegations from 205 countries and regions and the Refugee Olympic Team gathered in Japan. After 17 turbulent days, the country managed to fulfill its duty as the host nation.
One of the phrases that came to symbolize the Games was "parallel world." To avoid criticism from the spread of infections within Japan, the International Olympic Committee's PR officials have touted the Olympic and Paralympic competitions as taking place in a parallel world. This view overlapped with that of Japan's people, too.
For medical workers now under pressure, and people connected with eateries that have been repeatedly put in a difficult position during state of emergency declarations, the Olympics may well have seemed like a parallel world they had no desire to see. But many people's emotions vacillated between this separate world and the reality of the ferocious spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus. Perhaps it was an occasion for people who have been putting up with restrained lifestyles for a year and a half to forget their worries.
Since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, regarded as a triumph today, Japan has hosted or aspired to host the Olympics on what seems almost a 10-year basis. It hosted the Winter Olympics in Sapporo in 1972, and again in Nagano in 1998. Bids to hold the Summer Games in Nagoya in 1988 and Osaka in 2008 were unsuccessful. Next is the Sapporo Winter Olympic bid for 2030.
At the long-desired Summer Olympics held in Japan 57 years after it first hosted the event, we saw athletes being ignored due to an excessive focus on commercial interests, as well as authoritarian decisions. Perhaps it is not easy for the Olympics to change from its form as an "exclusive fund" of the IOC, but Japan can review how it interacts with the Games.
At an Aug. 6 news conference, IOC President Thomas Bach said regarding the 2020 Tokyo Olympics that he would "not like to make a judgment what history will think of us in 100 years from now. This is up, then, to future generations."
Disorder at the top of the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games invited confusion. The huge financial burden of the Games remains on the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's shoulders. Meanwhile, the government's haphazard response to the coronavirus increased its threat to day-to-day life.
Even so, the lessons and the significance of holding an unprecedented Olympic Games must be told. An investigation that respects a variety of opinions can lead to the future. We do not want this summer to be set down in history only as a litany of burdens.
(Japanese original by Dai Kosaka, Manager, Tokyo Olympic/Paralympic Reporting Headquarters)
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