Flower power! Morning glories grown at schools bring Japanese summer to Tokyo Olympics

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Hundreds of Morning glories, a symbol of Japanese summer, grown by elementary school students of Kashima city are decorating the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The flowers were supposed to be handed to spectators at all venues in nine prefectures in Japan, but since most of the venues are closed to audiences due to outbreaks of coronavirus, the flowers are instead lined up at entrances and in seating areas for athletes and at several municipalities.

“We were really looking forward to the Olympics being held in Kashima City, and we were really looking forward to having so many visitors from all over the world, but due to the coronavirus, there were no spectators, which was a real disappointment for us,” said Yukiko Masuda, Director of City Development Civic Centre in Kashima, who showed the flowers on Wednesday.

The city decided to hold an art exhibition instead, to show the flowers and messages written by children on pieces of paper, at its City Development Centre. They also started distributing gifts such as handcrafted fans and postcards to reporters and photographers visiting the country for the Olympics. The ‘hospitality goods’ were supposed to be handed out to spectators as well, but with an audience missing, the city’s government had to find a new use to not simply ‘store them away’.

Ibaraki Prefectural Soccer Stadium with a capacity of 43,000 people is one of the arenas holding the football tournaments of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

SOUNDBITES:

SOT, Yukiko Masuda, Director of Kashima City Development Civic Centre (Japanese): “So this is one of the projects that the Olympic Organising Committee is implementing. We were going to display the morning glories grown by the children of the elementary school at the stadium in Kashima to welcome the people who would come to watch the soccer match.”

SOT, Yukiko Masuda, Director of Kashima City Development Civic Centre (Japanese): “In the end, the games were held without spectators, so we can’t entertain visitors, so these morning glories were brought from the stadium to the city development civic centre here.”

SOT, Yukiko Masuda, Director of Kashima City Development Civic Centre (Japanese): “The children carefully grew these morning glories, and they wrote messages on them like this, so since we are holding a city art exhibition right now, and the people who come to see the exhibition are pleased to see these morning glories and messages.”

SOT, Yukiko Masuda, Director of Kashima City Development Civic Centre (Japanese): “We were really looking forward to the Olympics being held in Kashima City, and we were really looking forward to having so many visitors from all over the world, but due to the coronavirus, there were no spectators, which was a real disappointment for us.”

SOT, Yukiko Masuda, Director of Kashima City Development Civic Centre (Japanese): “The flowers are still blooming, but we would like to return them with their beautiful blossoms, and when the flowers have finished, in this way, after the flowers wither, seeds will form, and we would like to return them to the children in the form of seeds, as a way of saying thank you.”

SOT, Yukiko Masuda, Director of Kashima City Development Civic Centre (Japanese): “These are the hospitality fans that we handed out to the media at the press centre of Kashima Stadium. They are handmade, one by one, and are made of Japan ese paper. It takes about two to three hours to make one.”

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