Why Tokyo's elite are staging a backlash against the Olympics
The pandemic has thrown plans into disarray, but the city's movers and shakers are reluctant to celebrate the games
24 July 2021 • 5:00am
The opening ceremony finally got underway this week, after a year of delays and re-arranging
Shigeru Kaneko pauses from tidying the coffee shop he has run for 45 years and recalls a favourite childhood memory: the moment he watched the jubilant opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.
“I was just a schoolboy at the time,” smiles Kaneko, 70, a neatly-pressed Tokyo 2020 t-shirt peeking out behind his blue apron, as he looks out onto a narrow street in the eastern Asakusa district. “It was amazing. I remember the excitement as I realised how big and diverse the world was. Many people rushed out to buy a television just to watch it.”