Japan's global superstar Naomi Osaka on Friday lit the Olympic cauldron to mark the start of Tokyo 2020, in an opening ceremony shorn of glitz and overshadowed by a pandemic but defined by hope, tradition and gestures of diversity.
Postponed by a year due to COVID-19, the Games are being held without spectators in a city under a COVID-induced state of emergency, as many other parts of the globe also still struggle with a resurgence of cases.
Athletes, the vast majority wearing masks, paraded through an eerily silent National Stadium where flagbearers for the first time were both men and women and the Canadian delegation marched with rainbow badges on their uniforms in support of the LGBTIQ+ community.
Patty Mills and Cate Campbell lead team Australia
Patty Mills and Cate Campbell led Australia's 63-strong contingent while hundreds of teammates watched from around the world.
The pair, ahead of their fourth Olympic campaigns, shared the honours on Friday night after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) permitted countries to choose two flagbearers.
Boomers star and NBA title winner Mills became the first Indigenous Australian to carry the flag.
Australia's chef de mission Ian Chesterman, deputy chef de mission and three-time Olympian Susie O'Neill walked behind them, along with Sam Stosur competing in her fifrth Olympics and Melissa Wu and Joe Ingles in their fourth.
Flag bearers Cate Campbell and Patty Mills of Team Australia during the Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Source: Visual China Group via Getty
They were followed by Olympians in order of their Olympic appearances, with Mills' Boomers teammates and the Opals forming a bulk of the marching squad.
Athletes who remained at the village performed their own march before warching the ceremony from the stadium on the big stress, like their fellow athletes already based in other event cities throughout the country.
'The greatest honour I will ever have'
In its journey through the stadium, the torch was passed from Olympic champions to baseball legends - one born in Taiwan - a doctor and a nurse, a Paralympian, and children from parts of Japan hit badly by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011.
It was finally handed to Osaka, the 23-year-old four-time tennis grand slam champion whose background as the daughter of a Haitian man and Japanese woman reflects the changes and slowly growing diversity coming to a once ethnically homogeneous country.
"Undoubtedly the greatest athletic achievement and honour I will ever have in my life," Osaka wrote in a tweet. "I have no words to describe the feelings I have right now but I do know I am currently filled with gratefulness and thankfulness."
Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, said in his opening speech addressing the athletes: "The lesson we learned is we need more solidarity - more solidarity among societies, and solidarity within societies."
But the shift towards greater inclusiveness has not come without stumbles. Tokyo 2020 has been hit by a string of scandals, including the exit of senior officials over derogatory comments about women, Holocaust jokes and bullying.
Normally a star-studded display teeming with celebrities, the ceremony was low-key, with fewer than 1,000 people in attendance, strict social distancing rules and signs calling on spectators to "be quiet around the venue".
Opening with videos showing empty streets around the world and an athlete training alone in darkness, it also included drones hovering over Tokyo's National Stadium in the shape of the Olympic logo morphing into planet earth and a global performance via videolink of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 'Imagine'.
"With the world in a tough situation because of the coronavirus pandemic, I would like to pay my respect and express my gratitude to medical workers and all those who are working hard every day to overcome the difficulties," said local organising committee President Seiko Hashimoto.
The ceremony featured a fusion of traditional kabuki theatre - with its elaborate makeup and costumes - and a jazz piano improvisation, on a stage topped with the cauldron for the Olympic flame.
Olympic Flame and Cauldron next to the Japanese and Olympic flags during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, on 23 July, 2021. Source: AFP via Getty Images
At the parade, most countries were represented by both male and female flagbearers in an Olympic first, but not everybody stuck to pandemic protocols. In an awkward contrast to most other athletes, teams from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and Pakistan's flagbearers paraded maskless.
Echoes of 1964
The opening also featured fireworks in indigo and white, the colours of the Tokyo 2020 emblem, and gave a nod to Japanese tradition represented by giant wooden Olympic rings linked to the 1964 Games, which the city also hosted.
Some delegations enlivened the mood. Uganda, wearing bright traditional costumes, did a few measures of a dance, while Argentine athletes jumped up and down on entering.
A moment of silence was held "for all those family and friends we have lost," especially to COVID-19. The Israeli athletes slain at the 1972 Munich Games were also remembered.
Japanese Emperor Naruhito and Bach, both masked, cheered on the athletes after bowing to each other before sitting down.
"Today is a moment of hope. Yes, it is very different from what all of us imagined. But finally we are all here together," said Bach.
Unlike his grandfather who opened the 1964 Games with a Japanese word that means "congratulations," Naruhito opted for a more neutral word in Japanese that is closer to "commemorate".
Fireworks explode above the rim of the stadium near the end of the show. Source: Toronto Star via Getty Images
The ceremony was marked by major absences, including former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who wooed the Games to Tokyo. Top sponsors also stayed away, highlighting strong opposition to the event within COVID-fatigued Japan.
Only a third of Japanese have had even one dose of vaccines, prompting worries the Games could become a super-spreader event. More than 100 people involved with the Olympics have already tested positive.
Hundreds of people protested around the venue, and a recent poll showed 55 per cent of respondents saying they opposed the event going ahead, with 68 per cent expressing doubt about the ability of Olympic organisers to control coronavirus infections.
But not everyone was opposed.
"It's a difficult time. But when I think about the feelings of those athletes who have been prepared for this competition, I really want the Games to be held even without spectators," said 54-year-old Tokyo resident Hideko Kobori, who watched the opening ceremony with her husband and three children at home.
With AAP.
