The Olympic softball teams of Japan and Australia will have to produce something close to a classic this week if they are to divert attention from an increasingly chaotic build-up to the Tokyo Games.
In normal times memories of the scandals that blighted preparations for the Games – from allegations of vote-buying during the bidding stage to high-profile resignations over sexism – would shrink into the background as soon as the first pitch is delivered at the Azuma baseball stadium in Fukushima on Wednesday in the opening action from the Olympics.
But having ignited an unsuccessful campaign to call the Games off, coronavirus is dominating the final countdown to Friday’s opening ceremony in the host city, where the heat and humidity are adding to the sense of cabin fever at the locked-down athletes’ village.
With four full days to go before the Olympic cauldron is lit in the near-empty 68,000-seat main stadium the virus is already testing claims by the International Olympic Committee chairman, Thomas Bach, that it will have “zero” influence on Games he has described as the “best prepared ever”.
Organisers have now identified more than 60 Games-related Covid-19 cases, including two South African footballers and a member of the team’s staff. Twenty-one other members of the South African party have been identified as close contacts. The outbreak has cast doubt on the team’s opening match, this Thursday, against Japan.
Six British track and field athletes and two staff are now self-isolating at their hotel in Yokohama after they were deemed close contacts of someone who tested positive on their flight to Japan. Coco Gauff will not travel to Tokyo after the American tennis star returned a positive result, while an unnamed member of the US gymnastics team also tested positive after arriving.
In the space of a couple of days Tokyo 2020 has generated a stream of worrying news that must have organisers doubting if the sport will deliver the much-needed feelgood factor, and offer an alternative conduit for the pent-up emotions of a host population that would prefer the Games were not happening.
What would have been a highly symbolic visit by the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, to attend the opening ceremony and hold his first face-to-face talks with the Japanese prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, was abruptly cancelled on Monday after a senior Japanese diplomat in Seoul accused Moon of “masturbating” over his country’s strained ties with Japan.
The softball cannot begin soon enough for Suga, who has talked up sport’s potential to calm a deeply resentful Japanese public. Yet even a resounding win for the Japanese softball team is unlikely to offer much solace. Support for his administration has slumped to 36%, according to a weekend poll, with disapproval at almost 50% – the highest since he took office last September. To compound his misery, a separate poll found that two-thirds of people in Japan do not believe the country can host a safe and secure Olympics.
News of Moon’s cancellation came soon after another blow from a more surprising source, when the carmaker – and major Olympic sponsor – Toyota said it would not run Tokyo 2020-themed TV adverts during the Games and that its chief executive, Akio Toyoda, was likely to skip the opening ceremony. “The Olympics is becoming an event that has not gained the public’s understanding,” a Toyota executive told the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.
Over the weekend local media reported a university student from Uzbekistan had been arrested for allegedly raping a Japanese woman while they were doing part-time catering work at the Olympic Stadium. It is easy to forget that Tokyo 2020 was originally pitched as a celebration of Japan’s recovery from its worst natural disaster since the war.
On 11 March 2011 a towering tsunami knocked out the back-up power supply at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, triggering a meltdown in three of its reactors that forced tens of thousands of residents to evacuate. Along Japan’s north-east Tohoku region, the tsunami – preceded by an earthquake so powerful it shifted the earth on its axis – killed more than 18,000 people.
A decade later much of the destroyed coastline has been rebuilt but parts of Fukushima remain off-limits because radiation levels are still too high. Neighbourhoods where evacuation orders have been lifted face an uncertain future after many former residents decided not to return.
With the Fukushima plant’s operators struggling to contain a build-up of contaminated water that, controversially, will be released into the Pacific ocean, few are convinced that Fukushima is “under control” – a claim made by the former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, during a last-ditch bid presentation to the IOC in 2013.
But the dangerous and costly decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi is unlikely to trouble Australia’s and Japan’s women when they open their Olympic accounts under the gaze of the world’s media about 70 km west of the plant on Wednesday morning .
If a game of softball fails to lift the national mood, it will at least set the tone for dozens of events that will follow over the coming fortnight. Not only will it be played in fierce temperatures – and, according to forecasts, a possible thunderstorm – the action will unfold out of sight of local people after the governor of Fukushima, Masao Uchibori, overturned organisers’ plans to allow about 7,000 spectators into the venue.
As the first foreign athletes to arrive in Japan almost a month ago, the women of Aussie Spirit have at least had time to acclimatise to the weather and life inside the Covid bubble. For Japan, Wednesday’s match will be an opportunity to win a second consecutive gold in softball, 13 years after it last appeared in a summer Games.
The team’s manager, Taeko Utsugi, said the players were aware they were about to represent a pandemic-spooked country that is struggling to match their excitement at the sport’s return – albeit temporarily – to the Olympic fold for the first time since Beijing 2008.
“These will be different from the Olympics we’ve had up until now,” she said to the Kyodo news agency. “There are so many different sides to this. I didn’t have any role in the Olympic decisions, so I don’t know how I should feel about it. As far as we’re concerned, we have to focus on those things we need to do and are able to control.”
On Tuesday 20 July at 12 noon BST, join British Olympians Mary Peters, Fatima Whitbread and Alistair Brownlee for a Guardian Live livestreamed event as they look ahead to Tokyo 2020. Book tickets here.