"Nobody has ever organised (and) postponed Olympic Games before. Our deep gratitude and appreciation go to the Organising Committee. Thank you for staying with us on the side of the athletes who were longing so much for these Olympic Games. This is why I would like to thank the Japanese authorities at all levels, particularly Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide and Governor Yuriko Koike for their steadfast commitment. It took us, the IOC and our Japanese partners and friends, an equally unprecedented effort to make them happen. After all, the Olympics opening ceremony is a showcase not just of how a country sees itself, but also what it claims it wants to be."Yes, these were unprecedented Olympic Games.
Having a half-Black, half-Japanese woman who is a vocal Black Lives Matter advocate be the one to symbolically start the games speaks to the hope for a more diverse and tolerant future. Large political movements advocate for apartheid in all but name between the Japanese, ethnic minorities, and foreign workers. Many in Japan still see it as racially homogenous, and the country still has no anti-discrimination laws. Perhaps the most legitimately powerful symbolic statement was the choice of athlete to light the Olympic flame: Haitian-Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka. There were multiple solemn tributes to COVID-19 victims around the world, as well as the health workers who have been fighting the disease. The non-obtrusive nature of the various cultural references reflects how organizers felt the need to be respectful of the gravity of the ongoing pandemic, while at the same time signal that Japan was ready to reopen. Such pop culture signposts were what many expected of the event, especially after then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared dressed as Mario at the closing ceremony for the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Each team was welcomed to its spot in the stadium by masked men and women sporting grayscale-colored costumes patterned with screentones, as if they were manga characters brought to life.
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Viewers recognized songs from series like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Kingdom Hearts. As each team entered the stadium, waving to empty seats, they were accompanied by symphonic renditions of music from popular video games.
The most playful use of Japanese culture came during the Parade of Nations. For example, Ichikawa Ebizō XI, a member of a venerated family of kabuki actors, appeared in traditional attire to perform with jazz/prog rock fusion pianist Hiromi Uehara, showcasing a modern mixture of millenarian tradition with the avant-garde. After the Parade of Nations, the back half of the ceremony featured more specific cultural signposts, but with twists to project an image of Japan different from stereotypes. It was a quiet, minimalist, beautifully choreographed evocation of the sensation of being “apart together.” Further proceedings included song and dance tributes to Japan’s queer community, the history of Japanese craftsmanship, and victims of both COVID-19 and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. The first segment began with boxer Arisa Tsubata running on a treadmill, alone in the stadium, with shifting patterns projected onto the floor beneath him, slowly connecting him to others similarly training alone - a figurative depiction of how athletes have had to work during quarantine. So how did the ceremony embody that proclaimed intention? It was mostly a sequence of symbols and metaphors instead of a platform to show off Japanese culture.
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