| United by Emotion. The slogan of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games evokes the raw humanity of sport: the human instinct to reach out to one another in moments of triumph and defeat. But such embraces will be missing at the Games kicking off on Friday in Tokyo, where athletes have been instructed not to hug or shake hands. There will be no rows of fans bellowing cheers and national anthems, gushing once-innocuous clouds of droplets into the midsummer air. As the pandemic refused to subside after the postponement of the Olympics last year, organizers gradually whittled away their plans for a party atmosphere, and now the stands will be empty. Public viewings have been scrapped, while a flashy waterfront fan zone was closed off just over a week before the opening ceremony. For the athletes, coronavirus tests will be a daily occurrence, and they'll each be quarantined for three days after arriving in Japan. Sightseeing is off the table. They'll experience Tokyo from a bubble within the athletes' village and their venues and will be banned from socializing or dining in groups. And they must leave the country within 48 hours of their last competition. The Olympic Playbooks and reams of other guidelines lay out an intricate system of isolation, and quarantine, testing and social distancing for the other groups that make the Games happen—staff, contractors, the media and more. The journalists who'll bring you Olympics coverage on the Bloomberg Terminal and our other platforms have waded through a long and an oft-changing maze of logins, apps, check-ins and saliva tubes to get that access.  Photographer: Charly Triballeau/AFP Photographer: Charly Triballeau/AFP Japan made it through last summer relatively unscathed by the virus, but this year brought a resurgence. As new variants took hold and public health experts urged caution, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga threw Tokyo into its fourth state of emergency just a fortnight before the start of the Games, prompting Olympic organizers to ban spectators from events in the capital. The loss of ticket revenue has added insult to injury after the year-long postponement and additional anti-Covid measures fattened an already hefty budget. If Wembley Stadium in London could welcome tens of thousands of fans for the Euro 2020 football final despite surging virus cases in the U.K., why must Tokyo be so cautious? Japan's late start in vaccinations compared with its peers is only part of the story. Large swathes of the public remain disillusioned with the idea of devoting medical and other resources to the Games while the country is still combating the pandemic. The risks of associating one's brand with such a domestically unpopular event are stark. Having poured money into becoming a Worldwide Olympic Partner, Toyota pulled its planned Olympic ads from Japanese TV this week. As for Suga, he's loath to further upset voters amid tumbling approval ratings and with a party leadership race and a general election just months away.
Experts advising the government have said August could see cases in Tokyo hit new records. The heat will drive people indoors, into poorly ventilated spaces, and summer holidays beckon for a population growing fatigued of containment measures. Those factors would be a worry even without the Olympics, but the tens of thousands of people entering the country for the Games have added to local anxieties.
Tokyo 2020 was supposed to showcase Japan's recovery from the devastating earthquake, tsunami and and nuclear disaster of March 2011. There's an opportunity for the Olympics to tell another kind of recovery story—a celebration of the world's escape from Covid's long shadow. But for Tokyo, it was just too much, too soon. It remains to be seen whether Beijing will be able to harness that narrative at its Winter Games in 2022.
For now, 2020 banners, some tattered at the edges, still fly over streets across the capital and the rest of Japan. The organizers provide daily updates on the number of athletes, staff, contractors, volunteers and others in their care who have tested positive. On Thursday the tally stood at 91 cases, including 10 athletes. For the rest, the Olympic dream continues. In the coming weeks, Tokyo will see sport's greatest stars striving to make the months they've spent training in isolation count. The gold will still shine as brightly as it would have last year. Only this time, to avoid physical contact, they'll have to put the medals over their own heads.—Sophie Jackman | 
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