Opinion

Surreal spectacle of Tokyo’s COVID-19 Olympiad comes to a head

The Japanese government is spending big on an event that no one can attend. Banning alcohol in restaurants and bars makes the same amount of sense.

Leo LewisContributor

Jul 18, 2021 – 9.39am

Email LinkedIn Twitter Facebook

Subscribe to gift this article

Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.

Subscribe now

Already a subscriber?

As the world’s top athletes began to pour through the airport and a COVID-menaced Tokyo entered its final countdown to the Olympic Games this Friday, an immense, disembodied human head rose above the city to open the Cultural Olympiad.

The merits of the giant hot air balloon as a piece of art are for others to decide. As a piece of airborne mega-dissonance, it is somewhere between the flying gargoyle in cult film Zardoz and the Jewish mother in the skies of Woody Allen’s New York Stories. Neither seems a natural symbol of global athletic endeavour, but a $US25 billion ($33.8 billion) showcase is never just about sport.

Financial Times

Leo Lewis is the Tokyo correspondent for the Financial Times.