At the end of the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo2020 Olympics, Naomi Osaka lit the Olympic cauldron as a white ball peeled open like a flower, it’s metallic petals reflecting the light of the ignited Olympic flame.

 

Designed by Japanese company, Nendo, helmed by a Canadian-born Japanese named Oki Sato, the cauldron is a scintillating sight.

 

At most Olympiads, the flame remains in that cauldron for the extent of the Games. But in the 2020 version, a lick of the Olympic flame was moved to a small lantern, and transported about 13 kilometers southwest of the stadium to a bridge that connected two man-made islands in Tokyo Bay – Yume no Ohashi Bridge (or Great Bridge of Dreams).

 

That Tokyo Bay area has many of the Olympic venues, and under normal circumstances, would have been viewed by masses of passersby. I passed by at noon on Thursday, August 5 where about a few dozen people were snapping pictures of the sacred flame.

 

The cauldron on display is not the same one that Naomi Osaka ignited – it is a replica about one third the size of the one still at the National Stadium. Smaller, yet stunning.

 

The sacred flame will be extinguished at the Closing Ceremony to be held on Sunday, August 8. It is unclear whether the flame will again be transferred from the Tokyo Bay cauldron to the National Stadium cauldron, or whether the flame continues to burn within the bigger version hidden inside the stadium.

 

It’s probably the former.

 

The National Stadium was designed without a permanent fixture for the Olympic cauldron. One underlying reason for not including such a fixture was the use of wood in the construction of the stadium. The most common and apparent use of wood are the eaves that adorn the roof and other levels of the stadium, made from cedar sourced from the 47 prefectures of Japan.

 

According to the stadium designer, Kengo Kuma, the cauldron wasn’t in the original specifications and so he imagined that it would be like other Olympiads where the cauldron was situated inside the stadium during the opening ceremony and then moved.

 

The fuel that sustains the flame in the cauldron is hydrogen, a clean-burning gas that represents Japan’s drive to become carbon-neutral by 2050. Hydrogen has fueled part of the torch relay, many of the hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles that transport athletes and officials, as well as one of the buildings in the Olympic Village.

 

So the Olympic flame, born of the rays of the hydrogen-fueled sun in Athens on March 12, 2020, will be extinguished on Sunday, leaving behind water vapors and memories of an Olympiad like no other.