2020 Olympic Torch Relay: Japan Brings Multiple Torches, Forgets to Bring the Olympic Spirit

 

I’m the kind of dad who will take the family on a month-long road trip and then ruin it with a bunch of rules like “No screaming back there!” (because I don’t want to crash); “The driver picks the music!” (because I don’t want to go insane); and “Hey, no junk food before lunch!” (unless you give half to the driver).

But even up in Akita, in Japan’s pretty-far north, the summer days can be blistering hot by 11am. And after a couple hours cramped in the back seat with no escape from dad’s previous-century music, my kids were likely to start screaming at each other.

I pulled into a convenience store parking lot and said “Nobody wants ice-cream, right?” or something equally corny. The kids exploded out of the car and ran for the air conditioning and the ice-cream coolers. My wife almost beat them there. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her run so fast.

I stayed outside, absorbed in the poster in the window.

The 2020 Olympics had always seemed so far away. Yet here it was, August 2019. The various venue construction projects in and around Tokyo were barely on schedule and way over budget. The disruptive coronavirus pandemic was still months away. And the recruiting process for the Olympic Torch Relay was already in full swing.

The relay would begin in Fukushima, where recovery from the destruction of March 11, 2011 still had a long way to go. Recovery, resilience, rebirth: these were the underlying themes of the official torch relay slogan Hope Lights Our Way.

The poster, void of any cutesy cartoon characters or instant noodle sponsors, was decidedly un-Japanese. It said the relay would be passing through Akita on June 9^th and 10^th, 2020. This to me seemed reasonable. The route through the prefecture would probably stretch a good 200 kilometers, but with enough runners they could cover it in forty-eight hours. And getting enough people to participate in the carrying of the Olympic torch couldn’t be that hard, could it? This would be, for just about anyone, a once in a lifetime opportunity.

In time I would send in my own application to carry the torch with my daughter who, in my biased opinion, was a fine representative of the spirit of the Olympics. Even if we were assigned to run a mile at 3am through the dark, desolate Nagano countryside it would be an unforgettable and worthwhile endeavor.

Part of the application was a chance to explain one’s reasoning for wanting to run. My wife translated my words about how my daughter would occasionally say she wanted to be an Olympic swimmer. “The regular Olympics, not the Paralympics,” she’d always made clear.

It was both surprising and disappointing, then, to eventually have to accept the reality that her invitation to run wasn’t coming.

How many people had actually applied, I wondered. And was it really impossible to let her run a few hundred meters in the middle of the night somewhere?

I kept wondering, right up until I went down last month to watch the Olympic Torch Relay as it passed through town.

Call me an idealist, or a dreamer, or a fool. But I imagined the torch relay would be a more physically ambitious event; a reflection of that Olympic Spirit. Athletes and everyday people, carrying that flame through city streets lined with cheering throngs, and down back roads among rice fields, with only a few spectators here and there stepping out of their houses or emerging from the side streets of their tiny towns to see the quiet spectacle. I pictured that flame lighting up people’s faces as they ran through the mountains and along the coast, winding through Japan day and night, thousands of people pitching in to bring that symbol of the eternal human spirit over thousands of miles to reach Tokyo in time for the world.

As the farce rolled around the corner I thought I was going to throw up.

Several buses growled by, bright as convenience stores inside and utterly devoid of people except for the serious, white-gloved drivers. More buses passed, dressed up like massive plasma televisions,  nothing less and nothing more than mobile high-definition displays of trite symbolism. People in white warm-ups waved from the roof, as if those of us on the ground should care they were up there. More white warm-ups danced around in the street, engaged in voluntary seizures of manufactured excitement. Now and then, through an invisible loudspeaker, someone would shout out the Japanese equivalent of “Come on everybody, let’s make some noise!” There were corporate logos everywhere.

Coca-Cola Lights Our Way.

After a painful eternity the flicker of a flame appeared. Another white warm-up suit stood in the street, holding his torch high, waving to the cheering, picture-taking crowd. He had jogged there, I could only assume, from Matsumoto Station, the beginning of the parade route, almost a full 400 yards behind him.

From the shadows a woman appeared. You can probably guess what she was wearing. She had her own torch, as if through all of this they decided separate torches would be a good precaution against the virus that had turned the 2020 Games into the 2021 Games. She tipped her torch and brushed her fellow non-running runner’s torch. Then they stood there, smiling and waving and looking very comfortable.

The man disappeared and the woman began jogging easily, still smiling and waving and not at all sweating. I heard someone say she was an Olympic athlete from the Beijing or London or Whatever Games.

She jogged along Motomachi Street, heading for Matsumoto Castle, a picturesque and, sitting less than a half mile away, fitting end to the Matsumoto leg of the Olympic Torch Relay.

I came away with exactly two photos of the whole ridiculous affair. I was too dumbstruck to manage any more.

Admittedly, I have no idea how most Olympic torch relays are run. Maybe they are all like this. I’d learn later that earlier in the day a similar scene played out in another town further north. Then the entire production packed up and drove down the road to Matsumoto to have a few people run a few minutes behind the sensational and commercially-sponsored bus-heavy debacle. The next day they’d drive to another town for another two-hour, one-mile circus.

And on and on until their schedule put them in Tokyo, still with nary a soul breaking a sweat.

I’m glad I went down to see the relay, for two reasons. One, if I hadn’t gone I would forever think I missed out on something special. And two, I would have continued to be disappointed that my daughter wasn’t given the chance to partake in the Olympic spirit.

Because as far as I'm concerned it wasn't there.