On New Year’s Day, before a 58,000-strong crowd, Vissel Kobe clashed with Kashima Antlers in the 99th Emperor’s Cup. The football was so-so, but the setting was stunning. It was the first event to be held in Japan’s just finished $1.4bn National Stadium and a test run for the spectacle it would soon host: the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics.

The test was flawless and the run-up to the July 24 opening ceremony looked like a cakewalk. Among Olympic organisers, who had overseen more than $25bn of preparation, and among Japanese and international companies, who have paid more than $3.1bn to make the 2020 games the most heavily sponsored sports event ever, there was a collective sigh of relief.

For the Tokyo Metropolitan government, which estimated that from the winning of the bid in 2013 to a decade after the games in 2030 the event would give a ￥32tn ($294bn) boost to the national economy, all seemed on course. And for Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, the games offered a potent symbol of national recovery from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and of his “Abenomics” policies of revitalisation and reform.