TOKYO – The Tokyo Olympic torch relay will start Thursday as planned in northeastern Fukushima prefecture — but with no torch, no torchbearers, no public, and little ceremony.
There will be an Olympic flame — that arrived on March 12 from Greece — carried in a lantern and transported by a vehicle along what organizers hope will be empty roadsides, and with curious onlookers practicing social distancing to avoid spreading the coronavirus.
National broadcaster NHK has reported the plan, as has Japanese news agency Kyodo. Organizing committee CEO Toshiro Muto was to explain the full details later on Tuesday. “I wish at least a runner could get in a car with the flame on the route,” Akio Oguchi, who was planning to run in the Nagano area, told