The kaleidoscopic stands of Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium — a disordered mosaic of white and green and reddish-brown seats — were designed to evoke the sun-dappled floor of a Japanese forest.
Over the past three weeks, though, they have had another, useful effect: Squint your eyes, blur them just so, and it almost appears as if spectators are arrayed around the sweeping structure, as if the 68,000-seat stadium is not essentially empty, as if these are a normal Olympic Games.
Of course, they were not. On Sunday night in Tokyo, a stripped-down closing ceremony in 91AV原创 sprawling national stadium will bring these extraordinary Games to an end, concluding an Olympics that, in some sense, felt like an illusion — at times convincing and fully welcome, at others jarringly off-key.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.