And in fact it is the same as it is practically always when you look forward to an event or happening for a long time, possibly even looking forward to it. When it happens, it’s always different, the real beats the imagination, the reality is more powerful than any fantasy. Olympic opening in Tokyo, still in the pandemic. The question, pondered publicly for months, was whether it could be done, whether it made sense. And to whom that is of use. Wanting to celebrate being together in a time when distance is still the order of the day. It is seldom that the opposites meet so directly. An Olympic opening ceremony without an audience, that can’t really exist. Because a celebration without guests is everything, just not a celebration.
So travel by journalists’ bus, for once really completely privileged because reporters who have a special ticket are allowed into the new national stadium in Tokyo, spectators are not. Short trip through the city, a few hundred meters in front of the arena, the journalists are dropped off by the bus driver and walk the last part through a safety zone separated from the environment by a tape recorder. The citizens of Tokyo stand on the other side of the flutter belt, there is also the “Japan Olympic Museum”, where they can immerse themselves in the Olympic past. But the Olympic presence in the stadium over there remains closed to them. Many have cameras with them or small cameras with which they take pictures of the journalists. They ask where you come from – “Oh, Jimminy” – and then they watch the journalists from Germany march into the stadium. And the people from Tokyo stay outside.
And then it burns: the tennis player Naomi Osaka ignites the flame of the pandemic games one year late.
(Photo: Matthias Hangst / Getty)
Sure, the Olympics are important for the athletes who have trained for the Games, everything is right, whoever wants to see careers petered out without the Olympics, everyone should be allowed. On the other hand, the Olympics are so important to the people from the host cities, that’s what the masters of ceremonies always say, thanks to the citizens of London, thanks to the citizens of Barcelona, thanks to the citizens of Rio. And with them it should have been thanks to their tolerance in 2016. Some of the poor sat up in the favelas and looked at the great fireworks, with which they had nothing to do.
Even if there are no favelas in Tokyo: What does Olympia tell those who only watch the fireworks in front of their front door live on TV, or when they look out the window live?
Cold calm then in the stadium, all seats empty except for the guests and journalists. There are also occasional minutes of mourning, then deliberate silence falls on such an arena, but the audience is still there, and you can feel it tremble, as if breathing under a thick blanket. And when the minute of mourning is over – often it is not a complete minute – everyone shouts and shouts, then it’s like being let go. The silence in a full stadium is vital compared to the silence in that empty stadium. So you sit in your seat and hear the helicopter before the official ceremony begins. One of the helper falls down the folder with pieces of paper. A little shifting of the chair, a little swearing, from the right, because the damn wifi doesn’t work again. You can hear the helicopter and look into the empty stadium. Olympia in Tokyo. From the tape then selected and past from Japanese popular music, to warm up the masses who are not there. Clementine, Hideo Shiraki, Pizzicato Five and Mute beat, “summertime – frozen sun” – how appropriate.
When the nations march in, a lot is interchangeable – also because the faces are covered with masks
“The stadium mass is directed inwards, towards the sports facility, and at the same time watches itself”, wrote the Austrian Germanist Klaus Zeyringer, in his cultural history of the Olympic Games. It’s always been like that, it’s not like that this time, an opening ceremony without an audience is like declaiming in an empty theater hall. And of course the dialogue between those in the stadium and those out there is missing, with the endless invasion of nations, a lot is interchangeable because the already unknown faces of the sprinters from all parts of the world and cardinal points are also covered with a mask.
But because the view of the world has changed in a year and a half of the pandemic, one immediately begins to mentally divide the invading athletes, like fellow travelers in the tram. Here FFP2 bearers, there nasal hangers like the standard bearer Andrew Amonde from Kenya. A woman and a man have recently taken on the task of carrying the flag, which is indeed a step forward. In the case of Guams: sprinter Regine Kate Tugade and judo crack Joshter Andrew. The delegation from Tajikistan: maskless. The delegation from St. Vincent and the Grenadines also wears the three green diamonds of the flag on their mouthguards. Wikipedia knows what everyone should know: “Green represents the lush vegetation, St. Vincent’s agriculture and the ongoing vitality of the population.” Finally, and fortunately, something is still like before the pandemic: The standard bearer from Tonga, Pita Taufatofua, appears oiled again. The standard-bearer Malia Paseka remains unoiled.
The motto was expanded to include the word “together”: If not together on site, then together with the TV audience
Unfortunately, the basic law of popular culture is violated at this celebration and “Imagine” is performed – but “Imagine” not by Lennon is always a bad taste. Characteristic elements of the host countries are meanwhile covered by the brazen and expected pathos of the game makers during these ceremonies. IOC boss Bach preaches about the “message of solidarity”, about “living under one roof together” – how often have you heard this or something like that? But as Thomas Bach you can probably say something like that even in Beijing 2022.
One can justifiably accuse Bach’s coldly calculating senior Olympians for pulling this thing through here, against the will of many Japanese, no matter what the cost, but the organizers are left with a large chunk of costs anyway. And the IOC negotiated the contracts so well that things always come out well. Now, of all times, the Olympic motto has been expanded, instead of “Faster, higher, stronger”, now “Faster, higher, stronger – together”. And if not together on site, then together with the television audience. That’s what really matters.
Every opening ceremony is a reflection of its time
If you look at the whole panorama, this opening ceremony is of course a reflection of its time. Opening celebrations – they can be taken that seriously – always reflect a little bit the mood in the world. Unforgettable the snipers on the rooftops in Salt Lake 2002, so shortly after nine eleven. Lead time. The perfection of the drummers in Beijing 2008, an entire stadium in unison, China’s demonstration of power will not be forgotten. Also unforgettable: Sydney 2000, Cathy Freeman, an Aborigine, lights the flame. This gesture was overdramatized, of course, but is now a reminder of a phase that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall and ended with the collapse of the World Trade Center – during this time the world really seemed somehow to get better, and Sydney was the last glow.
Now the Corona Games. And the Winter Games are coming soon in Beijing. And maybe a typhoon over Tokyo first, at least it seems to be brewing. When the silence, which was briefly masked by the threatening background of the invasion of the nations, becomes audible again, it not only feels meteorologically like the calm before the storm.
But the Olympic Games in Tokyo are open, from the emperor himself. And now to the sport.