A Worldly Welcome Nagano Opens Its Doors To Neighbors For Winter Olympics
Awash in color and song, the 20th century’s final Winter Olympics opened Saturday with images of Japan’s past and the world’s future: a kimono-clad skating hero lighting the flame for her nation, a parade of half-naked sumo wrestlers casting away evil spirits and choirs on five continents performing Beethoven in stunning synchronicity.
It was, as the Olympics are designed to be, a meeting - of nation and nation, tradition and technology, history and modernity.
Against the backdrop of the magnificent Japanese Alps, athletes from 72 nations and regions marched into a cherry-blossom-shaped stadium built especially for these games. Children sang of hope and peace. Jets zoomed across the afternoon sky, leaving colored streamers of smoke in their wake, ending the festivities and beginning the competition.
“The Olympics are finally here,” said Yukio Nakamura, 57, of Nagano, who rode his bicycle to the opening ceremonies. “We’ve waited so long for this.”
Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, her hands covered in white mittens, applauded heartily as more than 2,400 athletes - the most ever for a Winter Olympics - paraded past their box. The athletes will compete during the next two weeks in 14 sports in Nagano and the mountains that encircle it. Some nations, like the United States, have dozens of athletes; others like Iran and Belgium have only one.
They strode into the Minami Nagano Sports park triumphantly, each group led by an athlete carrying its national flag, each nation escorted by a Japanese sumo champion and a child from the Nagano area. Greece, the birthplace of the Games, marched first; host country Japan was last.
The 50,000-strong crowd’s applause rose when the U.S. team marched in, wearing long slate-blue parkas and dark brimmed hats - a good buffer for the 34-degree weather.
“It’s just so exciting,” skater Tara Lipinski said. “I hope I can remember it forever.”
The Olympic flame, rising from a cauldron designed to resemble a traditional Japanese bonfire, was kindled by Japanese figure skater Midori Ito to the strains of “Un bel di” from Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly.”
Technology’s legacy to the 20th century shone as it showcased a work composed before electricity was harnessed - “Ode to Joy” from the Ninth Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven, who couldn’t hear the music he wrote. Today, 171 years after he died, hundreds of millions of people across the world heard it all at once.
A system tailored to eliminate the moments-long delay typical of conventional satellite transmissions allowed Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Seiji Ozawa to lead, from Nagano, a real-time, cross-continental performance of choirs.
Appropriately, much of the opening of these 18th Winter Games was like this - blending the Asian classical with the global modern in a choreographed wish for peace and a flourish of tradition and technology.
At ceremony’s end, just before five jets streaked crisply across the sky, dove-shaped balloons soared into the winter air, each carrying a message from a Nagano child.
Even the doves were tooled to fit not one, but two themes of this year’s Games. Foremost, of course, they signified peace.
They were also fully biodegradable.