NARAHA, Fukushima Pref.: The Tokyo Olympic torch relay kicked off in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, Thursday morning, beginning a four-month tour until the July 23 opening ceremony of the postponed Tokyo Games amid lingering fears over the new coronavirus.

The organizing committee for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics hopes that the torch relay can build momentum for the games, put off for one year due to the coronavirus pandemic, while ensuring countermeasures against the virus.

“The relay will be a precious opportunity for everyone in this country to feel that the start of the Olympics and Paralympics is nearing,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told reporters at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo Thursday morning. “I want each region to heighten the momentum toward the games.”

Due to tight parliamentary schedules, the prime minister was absent from the relay kick-off ceremony held Thursday at the J-Village national soccer training center, which straddles the towns of Naraha and Hirono in Fukushima. J-Village was once used as a base for workers dealing with the country’s worst nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s <9501> Fukushima No. 1 plant, which was triggered by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The first runners of the torch relay are 16 members of the “Nadeshiko Japan” national soccer team that won the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2011.

At the kick-off ceremony, Azusa Iwashimizu, one of the 2011 Nadeshiko Japan members, lit the torch with the Olympic flame, which arrived in Japan after it was lit at a ceremony in Olympia, Greece, the birthplace of the ancient Olympics, in March last year. The one-year postponement of the Tokyo Games was decided two days before the initially planned start of the torch relay on March 24 last year, but the Olympic flame stayed lit in the country.

The kick-off ceremony was simplified from a program planned last year, as part of efforts to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus, having no spectators from the general public. The number of guests and other attendees was reduced by 60 pct to some 160.

Participants included Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Tokyo Games organizing committee, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, Tamayo Marukawa, Japanese minister for the Tokyo Games, and Fukushima Governor Masao Uchibori. Olympic judo gold medalist Tadahiro Nomura and actress Satomi Ishihara, who serve as official ambassadors of the torch relay, also joined the event.

The torch will visit 859 municipalities in all of Japan’s 47 prefectures over 121 days through the day of the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony, which will take place at the Japan National Stadium in Tokyo.

JIJI Press