“Why?”

That’s the question distressing these Summer Olympics, set to kick off Friday in a host nation amid a fresh pandemic state of emergency—and understandably anxious about the arrival of thousands of athletes, support staff, media and guests. 

The “why” is primarily money, of course. Sure: one can make a stirring case for athletic virtuosity, the aging Olympic spirit and the need for distractions in fragile times. We can put faith into the effectiveness of vaccines and the improvements to virus containment strategies and treatments. 

But that Olympic flame will be lit in a barren Tokyo stadium on July 23 for the same reason they did a basketball playoff in a bubble and a World Series after a 60-game season: because the powers that be felt it would be too costly to cancel. 

Most people in Japan aren’t onboard. A new poll by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper found that 55% of respondents don’t want the Games to begin Friday, an uptick from the spring, when doctors admonished organizers to cancel the event, and national disapproval hovered above 70%. In addition, 68% remained skeptical that Olympic protocols would be effective in preventing an uptick in cases in a country where vaccinations, while steadily rising, were slow to roll out.  

The Games are such a fraught proposition in Japan that Toyota—the iconic Japanese company and an official Olympic sponsor—has pulled its planned in-country advertising. The traditional upbeat speculation about torch relays and opening ceremony surprises has been dwarfed by fear over the Games becoming a “superspreader” event.

Meanwhile, the athletes, staff and media (which includes staff from the Journal, and soon, yours truly) continue to arrive to compete and work in a restricted environment with rules that allow for little to no interaction with the country at large. Most of this year’s events will be deprived of fans. Athletes are asked to leave within 48 hours of the completion of their events. The torch relay has been dramatically curbed.  

Unsurprisingly, positive cases are starting to be detected among the arrivals—not yet in numbers to derail competition, but enough to keep the event on edge. 

Yes: there are always late-stage worries heading into an Olympics. It’s hard to think of a recent Games that hasn’t been challenged by some version of health and/or security issues and fury about exorbitant costs. The Journal’s Alastair Gale reported that Japan’s decision to bar spectators will deprive organizers of an expected $800 million, but that seems like a minor worry against the public health concerns.  

Olympics organizers have created an archipelago of controlled zones across Japan for about 60,000 foreign visitors including athletes and staff. WSJ’s Alastair Gale visits the Olympic Village to see the challenges of preventing a superspreader event. Photos: AFP via Getty, Bloomberg News/Zuma Press/AP

I’m sorry to sound like such a bummer, a few days out. But if you’re not feeling wary about these Games, then you haven’t been paying attention to what the people of Japan have been saying. It’s true that the planet has more than a year of experience organizing athletic events in a pandemic, but the Olympic Games are a singular beast. The scale and guest list makes a Super Bowl look like a table for one.  

The optimistic—and the financially invested—will keep the faith that what often happens at the Olympics will happen in Tokyo, that competition will begin, and the action and pageantry will begin to dampen the pre-Games worrying. That is certainly what the International Olympic Committee is hoping for; despite its history of corruption and waste, its two-week event still possesses something irresistible. 

As usual, the Games will be presented as a two-week television spectacle—outlets like NBC are critical patrons, paying billions for rights, and in return, they become its principal narrators. Some of the usual visuals won’t be there—rowdy crowds, nervous parents on site—but there are sure to be new arcs and starry moments from the likes of Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Naomi Osaka and others. The Olympics reliably provide great drama. Whether it’s enough to justify the cognitive dissonance of hammering forward with the Games amid a health crisis is another question. 

It should be stated that these Games very much mean something to the people competing. You can see it in photos and videos posted from athletes landing in Tokyo for an event much more muted than once imagined, but still, to them, a pinnacle accomplishment. These men and women have already spent the past 16 or so months training amid pandemic conditions, and now they will push the limits of their athleticism in empty rooms. They will try to avoid the devastating potential of a positive test or contact trace that undoes their participation. Some heartbreak feels inevitable. 

It won’t be the same. The Olympics are not an event designed for social distancing. Almost all of the best things about the Games are the result of the interaction of participants and observers—what it looks like when the world gathers to compete. That camaraderie—the serendipitous moments between the Opening Ceremony and Closing Ceremonies—is now considered a workplace hazard. It was reported the other day that medalists will be asked to put their medals around their own necks. 

“[Medals] will be presented to the athlete on a tray and then the athlete will take the medal him or herself,” the IOC president, Thomas Bach, said the other day. “It will be made sure that the person who will put the medal on the tray will do so only with disinfected gloves, so that the athlete can be sure that nobody touched them before.”

These are the melancholic terms. 

In a final comedic twist, these Games still insist on being billed as Tokyo 2020, apparently because of the avalanche of merchandise and advance marketing created with last year’s date in mind. 

I get it: You don’t want to have to take a pen and draw a 1 over the 0 on a zillion T-shirts. Then again, calling 2021 2020 feels like a perfect statement of these times, in which if you don’t like a reality, you can just create your own. 

It’s a strategy until reality intrudes, and the public again starts asking: “Why?”

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Are you confident the Tokyo Summer Olympics can happen without significant interruption?

Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com