The 2020 Tokyo Olympics were a "suicide mission,” warned one of Japan’s richest men. "Cursed,” said a former prime minister. Even contemplating hosting them in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic would be "simply beyond reason,” said one sponsor.
In July 2021, as Japan prepared to host the year-delayed event, the drumbeat of a disaster waiting to happen was overwhelming. No comparison was too outlandish: The pandemic-era Games would be as bizarre as the "Nazi 1936 Olympics in Berlin,” while the sense of a government dragging an unwilling public to disaster was compared to World War II "when the Japanese public did not want the conflict but no leader dared halt it.”
As Paris prepares to light the Olympic torch, my thoughts have turned to how this narrative has fared in the three years since. Disaster clearly did not occur: There was no superspreader event and no Olympic variant of the virus manifested itself. Nonetheless, the success did not save the government of former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who pushed for the Games to go on.