Simon Denyer

TOKYO — A day after the Tokyo Olympics concluded, social media posts in Japan showed photos and videos of a man believed to be Thomas Bach, the International Olympic Committee’s president, strolling through Ginza, a popular shopping district in…

TOKYO — The flame that burned throughout one of history’s most controversial Games was extinguished Sunday as Japan brought the curtain down on the Tokyo Olympics with Closing Ceremonies that were as unusual as the event itself. Most of the athletes…

TOKYO — Roughly eight centuries ago, a new martial art called karate came into being on a subtropical island now known as Okinawa. On Friday, an Okinawan won the first Olympic gold medal in men’s kata, one of the modern sport’s premier events. “I’m…

TOKYO — Japan’s capital logged a record number of coronavirus cases this week, burdening the hospital system amid a slow vaccine rollout, an increasingly apathetic public and the government’s unsuccessful efforts to restrict the rapid spread of the…

TOKYO — Two Belarusian Olympic officials accused of attempting to force sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya to return home early from the Tokyo Games have been stripped of their accreditation and will be leaving Japan, organizers said on Friday. The…

After the Japanese table tennis team mounted an upset against the Chinese in the mixed doubles Olympic final, they found themselves facing a barrage of online hate. Even before the competitors took to the podium, death threats and messages to “go to…

TOKYO — Japanese gymnast Mai Murakami broke down in tears Thursday when asked about hateful comments directed against her online for participating in an Olympics that many people in this country didn’t want to happen. “I know there are people who are…

TOKYO — In the months leading up to the Olympic Games, the citizens of Tokyo became extremely worried about the possibility of tens of thousands of foreigners coming in and infecting them with the coronavirus. Their concerns may have been…

TOKYO — For a moment at the start of Friday’s Opening Ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics, members of a crowd gathered outside National Stadium gasped as fireworks lit up the sky and reflected off the glass front of a nearby building. But the gasps soon…

TOKYO — The Tokyo Olympics officially began Friday with the Opening Ceremonies, a four-hour extravaganza of flag-waving, parades, music, lights and cultural celebration that culminates with the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. TOKYO — Before she…

TOKYO — Another ouster of a person involved in staging the Tokyo Olympics — this one over an antisemitic joke more than two decades ago — is the latest incident in which the Games have exposed uncomfortable truths in a country where many feel…

TOKYO — With the Olympics mired in controversy and criticism just two days before the Opening Ceremonies, big business here has started to distance itself from the event. Following the lead of Toyota, Japan’s biggest business associations and some of…

“We had doubts every day,” Bach said Tuesday. “We deliberated and discussed. There were sleepless nights. Like everyone else in the world, we did not know — I did not know — what the future would hold.” If Bach indeed had sleepless nights in the…

TOKYO — South Korean President Moon Jae-in has scrapped a planned visit to Tokyo for the Olympics and to meet Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, his office said on Monday, shortly after lodging a protest over "unacceptable" remarks by a Japanese…

TOKYO — When Tokyo staged the Olympics in 1964, the Games marked Japan’s reemergence from the ashes of defeat in World War II and symbolized its readmission in the post-war international order. It was a moment of immense national pride. The Games…

TOKYO — International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach added to his already shaky public image in Japan on Tuesday by inadvertently referring to the Japanese people as “Chinese” at his first public appearance since arriving in Tokyo last…

TOKYO — Frenchman Vincent Fichot began a hunger strike this weekend close to Tokyo's Olympic Stadium in a desperate bid to regain access to his two young children, who were taken away by their mother three years ago and whom he hasn't seen…

TOKYO — Japan will bar spectators from all Olympic events held in and around Tokyo, organizers announced Thursday, as the government imposed a fresh state of emergency to cover the capital during the Games. “This is a sorry message that we have to…

The marathon is among the Olympics’ most iconic events: crowds of cheering fans metaphorically carrying runners through the pain barrier, culminating in the famous finish in the Olympic stadium to close out the track and field program. The races,…