The kaleidoscopic stands of Tokyo¡¯s Olympic Stadium ¡ª a disordered mosaic of white and green and reddish-brown seats ¡ª 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 Japan¡¯s sprawling national stadium will bring these extraordinary Games to an end, concluding an Olympics that, in some sense, felt like an illusion ¡ª at times convincing and fully welcome, at others jarringly off-key.
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