Tokyo Drift Doubts On Legacy And Cost Concerns Hang Over Japan's Summer Games

The public square outside Shimbashi station, the scene of anti-Olympic protests this summer, has resumed its usual role as an after-work rendezvous. Newspapers that juxtaposed athletic feats with a rising coronavirus caseload now wonder how Japan’s new prime minister, Fumio Kishida, will fare when voters go to the polls at the end of this month.

- Justin McCurry

The recent lifting of Covid-19 emergency measures has added to the feeling that “normality” is being restored in Tokyo after months of Olympic controversy and virus-induced anxiety. Residents who were banned from attending all but a few events might be tempted to ask if the Games of the XXXII Olympiad were, in fact, a recurring theme in a feverish dream.

The record-breaking rush of gold medals for Japan’s athletes, the warm glow of media attention that followed and the empty venues where their heroics unfolded are proof that Tokyo 2020 did happen and for one heady fortnight the pandemic was outdone by faster, higher and stronger human endeavours.

But this week – as the city marks two months since International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, and Emperor Naruhito declared the Games over – the hosts, and the organisers who clung to the IOC message of Tokyo 2020 as a supreme act of resilience, are facing a moment of reckoning.

Are there signs, as promised, that Tokyo 2020 will leave a lasting sporting legacy for the public? Was hosting the Games in the middle of the pandemic a mistake? Crucially, did it justify the $15bn bill, most of which will be paid by Japanese taxpayers? These are meaty questions that elicit only inexact answers.