The opening ceremony will be held at the New National Stadium in Shinjuku designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. Although it can accommodate up to 68,000 spectators, there will be no fans because Tokyo is currently under a Covid state of emergency. Only a select number of officials and dignitaries will be in the audience.

Apart from the pandemic, which delayed the Games for a whole year, the lead up to the opening ceremony has been problematic. On July 22, opening ceremony director Kentaro Kobayashi was dismissed over jokes he made in the 1990s about the Holocaust. Earlier in the week, the show's composer Keigo Oyamada quit after old articles of him admitting to bullying classmates with disabilities resurfaced. In February, Yoshiro Mori was forced to step down as head of the organising committee for his inappropriate remarks about women. 

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Despite the scandals and coronavirus, the opening ceremony may still be the spectacle we've come to expect from the Games. Over 11,000 athletes from 206 countries will be parading through the stadium. Formal ceremonial rituals like the raising of the Olympic flag and the lighting of the Olympic flame will still proceed. But what usually makes the opening ceremony such a joy to watch is the artistic programme that showcases the host nation's cultural richness. 

Executive producer Marco Balich earlier noted that it will be a "sobering' ceremony but "with beautiful Japanese aesthetics. Very Japanese but also in sync with the sentiment of today, the reality," he said