在一座冷落奥运会的主办城市感受奥运会
Outside the Olympic Cocoon, a Tokyo Abuzz Only With Cicadas
HANNAH BEECH
2021年8月4日
TOKYO — Outside the Olympic bubble is a city that does not want us.
东京——在奥运泡泡之外，是一个不想要我们的城市。
Like many of the tens of thousands of people visiting Tokyo for the Games, I am in a permeable cocoon that is supposed to keep me separate from the city’s residents. Those people include my mother.
就像成千上万来东京观看奥运会的人一样，我被困在一个具渗透性的茧中，目的是将我与东京的居民隔离开来。那些人里还有我的母亲。
Shuffling from table tennis to archery to taekwondo, from diving to boxing to weight lifting, I hear snippets of Tokyo’s summer soundtrack: the shrill of cicadas, the clomp of kids in cleats heading home from soccer, the trill of a wind chime not quite stilled in the August heat.
从乒乓球到射箭，再到跆拳道，从跳水到拳击，再到举重，我听到了东京夏日原声的片段：尖锐的蝉鸣声，踢完足球、穿着钉鞋的孩子们回家时重重的脚步声，在8月的炎热中时有时无的风铃的颤音。
What is missing are the normal sounds that animate an Olympic host city, a window ajar with the TV broadcasting a thrilling final or a bar crowded with revelers celebrating the latest gold medal. There are few Olympic billboards in Tokyo. Toyota and other Japanese companies have read the mood and refrained from running advertisements tied to the Games. Apart from the athletic venues scattered across the Japanese capital, there is little sign that the greatest and most expensive sporting spectacle on earth is taking place here.
缺少的是那些让奥运会主办城市充满活力的平常声音：一扇半开的窗户，里面传来电视播放着惊心动魄的决赛的声音，或是一个酒吧，里面挤满了庆祝夺冠的狂欢者。东京的奥运广告牌不多。丰田(Toyota)和其他日本公司读懂了这种情绪，避免投放与奥运会相关的广告。除了位于日本首都各处的体育场馆外，几乎没有迹象表明地球上最盛大、最昂贵的体育盛会正在这里举行。
It is strange to be in a host city that has so determinedly turned its back on the Games, especially given the Japanese sense of hospitality. Yet who can blame the residents of Tokyo, my family and friends included?
考虑到日本人的热情好客，身处于一个如此坚决地冷落奥运会的主办城市，我感觉很奇怪。然而，谁又能责怪东京的居民，包括我的家人和朋友呢?
The Games may have brought Japan 18 golds as of Tuesday afternoon, including victories for nine judoka and a 13-year-old street skateboarder. Yet the people of Tokyo have been sequestered from the Olympics. With a state of emergency in place because of the coronavirus, they are barred as spectators. They cannot tour the venues. The only people who can witness each shattered Olympic record are people from the outside, people like me.
截至周二下午，本届奥运会可能已为日本带来18枚金牌（截至该比赛日结束，日本共获得19枚金牌——编注），其中包括九枚柔道金牌和一名13岁的街头滑板运动员获得的金牌。然而，东京人却被隔离在奥运会之外。由于新冠病毒导致的紧急状态，比赛没有观众。他们不能进入场馆。唯一能见证每一项奥运纪录被打破的人是局外人，像我这样的人。
With us, though, we have brought the threat of disease. The Olympics have coincided with Tokyo’s highest daily caseloads since the pandemic began. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has insisted that the rising count has nothing to do with the influx of foreigners. Most of the cases inside the Olympic bubble are among locals, contractors or others who live in the capital, Japanese Olympic officials have said. That means domestic transmission is to blame, made all the worse by Japan’s sluggish vaccine rollout. Less than a third of the country is fully vaccinated.
然而，我们也带来了疾病的威胁。奥运会期间，东京的每日病例数达到了新冠疫情暴发以来的最高水平。日本首相菅义伟坚持认为，病例数的上升与外国人的涌入无关。日本奥委会官员说，奥运泡泡中的大多数病例是当地人、承包商或其他居住在东京的人。这意味着国内传播是罪魁祸首，而日本迟缓的疫苗推广更是雪上加霜。该国只有不到三分之一的人口完全接种了疫苗。
While thin crowds of onlookers gather to catch a glimpse of a soaring bike at a BMX event or to peer through the fence at the Olympic Stadium, many others in Tokyo have given up on the Games altogether. On Sunday, a group of protesters gathered near the tennis arena and shouted anti-Olympic slogans that wafted into the men’s singles final taking place inside. Another rally was held in front of the prime minister’s residence.
虽然有稀稀拉拉的观众聚集在一起，观看小轮车竞速赛中一辆飞驰的自行车，或者透过奥林匹克体育场的围栏往里看一眼，但东京的许多人已经完全放弃了奥运会。周日，一群抗议者聚集在网球馆附近，高喊反奥运口号，这些口号飘进了馆内举行的男子单打决赛。另一场集会在首相官邸前举行。
The Japanese news media have resorted to gotcha journalism, trying to catch foreigners who have breached quarantine protocols, traveling on public transport or lingering at restaurants when they are supposed to be eating at their hotels. On Monday, the broadcaster NHK denounced the lack of social distancing on crowded Olympic buses. Although those of us here for the Games have gone through many rounds of Covid testing, there were no requirements that we be vaccinated to enter the country.
日本新闻媒体采取了“抓把柄新闻”(gotcha journalism)的方式，试图捕捉那些违反隔离规定的外国人，他们乘坐公共交通工具出行，或者本该在酒店用餐时却在外面的餐厅逗留。周一，日本广播协会(NHK)谴责拥挤的奥运巴士上没有保持社交距离。虽然我们这些来这里参加奥运会的人已经经历了多轮新冠检测，但并没有要求我们在入境前必须接种疫苗。
Inside the bubble, the legion of volunteers, some of whom have not received their injections, try their best. Old men swing their arms with the vigor of cricket bowlers — not an Olympic sport yet — guiding a straggling journalist to a crosswalk. Young women offer squirts of anti-mosquito spray and paper fans, as well as neck towels with instructions in English on what to do should heat stroke strike: “Move to a cool area, loosen clothes and cool down the body.”
在这个泡泡里，志愿者团队正在尽他们最大的努力，而其中一些人还没有接受疫苗注射。老人们挥舞着手臂，就像板球投球手一样（板球还不是一项奥运会比赛项目）引导一名掉队的记者走向人行横道。年轻女性向人们提供防蚊喷雾和纸扇，以及放在脖子上的毛巾，上面写着中暑时该怎么做：“到凉爽的地方，解开衣服，给身体降温。”
Just like a Covid bubble that will supposedly keep Tokyo safe from us, the Olympics’ guardians pretend that the Games float above politics. No protests should sully the Olympic podium, they have warned. Yet the Olympics are a fundamentally political act by a city or a nation, for good or for bad. Berlin 1936 exposed the racism and malevolence of Nazi ideology. Tokyo 1964 was Japan’s announcement that it had transcended wartime defeat and aimed for economic glory. Seoul 1988 showcased a similar statement of arrival, as did Beijing 2008.
就像新冠病毒泡泡会让东京远离我们一样，奥运会的守护者们也假装奥运会与政治无关。他们警告说，任何抗议都不应该玷污奥运领奖台。然而，无论好坏，奥运会从根本上说都是一个城市或一个国家的政治行为。1936年的柏林奥运会揭露了纳粹意识形态的种族主义和恶毒。1964年的东京奥运会是日本宣布它已经从战败中走出，目标是获得经济上的荣耀。1988年的汉城和2008年的北京也有类似的登场声明。
What will Tokyo 2020, held in 2021, signify? The organizers have taken “peace” as one of their bywords. It’s a hard ideal to dispute. And given Imperial Japan’s brutal sweep through Asia in the past century, pacific ambitions are worthy. At the Olympic opening ceremony, in a nearly empty stadium saddled with cost overruns, paper doves fluttered from the sky.
2021年举办的“东京2020年奥运会”意味着什么？组织者把“和平”作为他们的口号之一。这是一个很难辩驳的理想。考虑到日本帝国在过去的一个世纪里对亚洲的野蛮扫荡，和平的雄心是值得的。在奥运会开幕式上，在一个几乎空荡荡的体育场，由于成本超支，释放的是纸鸽子。
On Friday at 8:15 in the morning, Japan will mark the 76th anniversary of the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which is believed to have killed more than 150,000 people. At the 1964 Games, a runner who was born on that day was chosen to light the Olympic flame.
周五上午8点15分，日本将纪念美国在广岛投下原子弹76周年。据信，有15万余人因此死亡。在1964年奥运会上，一名在那天出生的赛跑运动员被选中点燃奥运圣火。
This time around, the International Olympic Committee has declined to remember the detonation of the atomic bomb, which was followed by another in Nagasaki three days later, with a moment of silence, despite a petition led by a onetime mayor of Hiroshima.
这一次，国际奥林匹克委员会(International Olympic Committee)拒绝以默哀纪念广岛的原子弹爆炸和三天后长崎的爆炸，尽管一名广岛前市长发起了请愿。
So much of Tokyo burned, too, in the last months of the war from American firebombing. My grandmother, who would soon be a war widow, recalled the crackle of wooden houses consumed like kindling, how the flames danced as the shoji paper screens caught fire.
在战争的最后几个月里，由于美国的燃烧弹，东京的很多地方也被烧毁了。我的外婆很快就成为了战争寡妇，她还记得木房像柴火一样被烧毁的噼啪声，以及障子屏风着火时火焰跳动的情景。
Years before, in Shanghai, Japanese air raids left a city gutted. Then the Imperial Japanese troops turned to Manchuria, to the Philippines, to Indonesia, and left a trail of blood.
多年前，在上海，日本的空袭摧毁了这座城市。然后日本帝国的军队转向满洲、菲律宾、印度尼西亚，留下了一条血路。
Most of what those in the Olympic bubble will see of Tokyo comes from the postwar era. Skyscrapers sprouted from the ashes of war. Many athletic venues are on reclaimed land, like the archery field known as Yumenoshima, or the Island of Dreams.
奥运泡泡里的人看到的东京大多来自战后时代。摩天大楼在战争的废墟中拔地而起。许多体育场馆都建在填海造地的土地上，比如被称为“梦之岛”(Yumenoshima)的射箭场地。
This Tokyo is impressive, all steel and glass and soaring atriums, ingeniously engineered to withstand earthquakes and landscaped with plenty of trees. But it is an unyielding place, bound by endless regulations and cautionary fine print, and during a state of emergency, it feels particularly lonely.
这样的东京令人印象深刻，全由钢铁和玻璃建造，中庭高耸，设计巧妙，可以抵御地震，有大量的树木做景观。但这里是一个不屈不挠的地方，受到无尽的规章制度和谨慎细则的约束，在紧急状态下，它感到特别孤独。
The Tokyo that is missing from these Olympics, the one out of view of the buses shuttling from stadiums to hotels, is a city constructed on a more intimate scale. Here, buildings have wooden embellishments and entryways so low that heads must be bowed to enter. They are the kind of convivial places where taxi drivers take off their white gloves at the end of the day and sit next to workmen in boots for a beer or a bowl of Tokyo’s hearty offal hot pot.
这届奥运会缺失的、在从体育场到酒店的巴士上看不到的东京，是一座以更亲密的规模建造的城市。这里的建筑都有木制的装饰，入口非常低，必须弯着腰才能进去。在这些友好的地方，出租车司机会在一天工作结束后脱下白手套，坐在穿着靴子的工人旁边，喝一杯啤酒，或吃一碗东京丰盛的内脏火锅。
Late last week, I went to watch badminton at the Musashino Forest Sports Plaza in western Tokyo. Toward the end of World War II, the neighborhood was bombed because it was home to a military aircraft factory. (A couple of incarnations later, the company that owned it turned into the airplane and car manufacturer Subaru.)
上周晚些时候，我去东京西部的武藏野之森综合体育广场观看羽毛球比赛。第二次世界大战快结束时，这片街区遭到轰炸，因为这里曾是军用飞机工厂的所在地。（几经转手之后，它的所有者变成了飞机和汽车制造商斯巴鲁[Subaru]。）
When the Japanese mixed-doubles badminton pair beat their rivals from Hong Kong to claim bronze, a group of volunteers jumped up and down in excitement. It was a display of patriotism that surely broke Olympic protocol. But it had been a long day, and there were no spectators to take in the victory.
当日本羽毛球混合双打组合击败来自香港的对手，获得铜牌时，一群志愿者兴奋地跳上跳下。这是爱国主义的表现，肯定违反了奥运规定。但这是漫长的一天，也没有观众在那里欣赏这场胜利。
Later, I walked out of the sports arena into the simmering heat. The badminton journalist corps, such as there was, had dispersed. There was no one around, just a row of white tents and empty corridors, more the feel of a field hospital than an athletic venue. The air sang with the sound of summer insects. The intensity of their thrum is perhaps highest before they die.
后来，我走出体育场，走进了沸腾的热浪中。之前在那里的羽毛球记者团都已散去。周围一个人也没有，只有一排白色的帐篷和空荡荡的走廊，让人感觉更像是野战医院而不是体育场馆。夏天的昆虫在空中歌唱。虫鸣声最强烈的时候，或许就是它们死前。
Sweat pooled on my upper lip inside my face mask. Before me, on the path, lay a single cicada wing, glistening in the sun.
在我的口罩里，一滩汗水积在我的上唇。在我面前的小路上，躺着一片蝉的翅膀，在阳光下闪闪发光。
