Some Like It Cool

By Pico Iyer/Nagano

There were no fireworks, no arrows arching toward the torch. Just children, scores of them, scattering like snowflakes, and the strangled cries of some costumed chanters. Innocent and esoteric by turn, the first Olympic opening ceremonies to have their very own 15th century landscape poster introduced the world to what might be seen as Japan's latest brand of high-tech traditionalism: a sumo wrestler and a schoolgirl walking hand in hand.

Just four days earlier, all over the island, faithful citizens had scattered roasted soybeans, in the annual Setsubun ceremony, crying, "Devils go out! Happiness come in!" Now a sumo wrestler whose Japanese name is an ancient word for dawn, attended by a sword-bearer and a dew sweeper, ritually purified the ground on a chilly silver morning. In something of the same spirit, International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch reminded the world (not least Baghdad and Washington) that the "Olympic truce" calls for an end to formal warfare during the competition.

The opening ceremonies of the Nagano Winter Games were as lyrical and spare as you might expect in a stadium shaped like a cherry blossom yet named, not memorably, the "Stadium for Opening and Closing Ceremonies." Helium doves fluttered prettily, Japan's Emperor and Empress clapped gamely for 40 minutes of parading athletes, and a large number of the contestants were dressed like secret policemen.

But the Games also unveiled a new kind of East-is-West spin to things. The 516-lb. wrestler who sanctified the earth, after all, was a Hawaiian (called in when the only wrestler stronger than he is contracted bronchitis), and the rousing chorus of Beethoven's Ninth (a perennial Japanese Christmas favorite) was conducted by Seiji Ozawa, just returned from Boston. Andrew Lloyd Webber was responsible for the ad-worthy chorus, When Children Rule the World (and the producer of the whole extravaganza was the man responsible for a Japanese West Side Story).

There were curlers here and a Kenyan skier there, female hockey players and an Indian luger. Now and then, perhaps, a few niceties got lost in translation ("Oh, we beseech you. Heave-ho, heave-ho," was one of the first lines to greet spectators on the scoreboard), but for the most part the ceremonies so conformed to the textbook that even their "image director" was a man whose first name is Man. Elegiacally minded Japanese may have been calling these the last Games of the 20th century, but the efflorescence of young faces suggested they are really the first of the 21st.

The ancient rites that opened the 18th Winter Games were, in fact, apt for an Olympiad that some had been crowning the Attitude Games. As beach volleyball brought tank tops and bikinied dudes to the Summer Games in Atlanta, snowboarding, most conspicuously, looked to be smuggling a radical edge and Technicolor glint to the mild-mannered Winter Games. With the world-champion shredder refusing to show up, and even the Chinese athletes showing off their backflips in freestyle skiing, it could look as if the I.O.C. were a global subsidiary of MTV. (CBS even hired former MTV veejay Kennedy to do color commentary.)

The truth of the matter is that the ruling Olympians, though conservative, are canny enough to see that they have to move with the times before the times run away from them. In any case, kids will be kids, even in the 21st century. You have only to go to the Olympic Village, where the game room is packed with students pounding away at Blast City screens and waiting to get into the cyber Surf Shack nearby, to be reminded that the Games are an unchanging festival of youth. The athletes' quarters resemble the student union at some Fun U., where the most prominent magazine on sale is Tiger Beat and healthy young people drift around in search of same.

Yes, Nagano will feature a kickboxing figure skater called Elvis and an American skier called Picabo with her own line of "Air Max Electrify" shoes, but they are nothing new here--nor is the Italian skier who may become the daughter-in-law of Luciano ("United Colors of") Benetton. The poster girl of Nagano will almost certainly be a teenage figure skater not noted for her nose rings. Mike Moran, an assistant executive director of the U.S. Olympic Committee, recalls that a renegade stance is as old as skiers Billy Kidd and Spider Sabich: "Those guys had every bit of the attitude we now attribute to Generation X. What has changed is society."

As the Games began, in fact, the athletes looked just like classic kids but in Speed Generation gear. "It's amazing," marveled Shiva Keshavan, 16, the Indian luger, of the sport he took up 18 months ago. "I go faster than most cars do." Jennifer Rodriguez, a Miami speed skater with a pierced navel and a pierced-tongue speed-skating boyfriend, confesses, "Deep down, a little bit of everybody, no matter how rebellious you are, wants to go to the Olympics and just enjoy the magic."

That's in synch, of course, with young Japanese, who crowd into head shops in Hakuba and talk of winter sports as kakkoi, or cool, without referring to temperature. "Snowboarding's awesome, man," Shoji Koike, a student of Tsukuba University, volunteered, unsolicited, last week. "Once you've tried it, you don't go back to skiing."

All Nagano is lit up with that same sense of bright excitement, flags fluttering, hardware stores displaying signs that say, GO, JAMAICA, GO (the bobsled team is back), and bus drivers reciting, "Have a nice day," even after night has fallen. The area had been planning to stage an Olympics in 1940, but war put its plans on hold for more than half a century. Now, in the excitement of the moment, Olympic athletes were offered free bowling lessons at the Young Pharaoh Bowl, and even in public rest rooms, visitors were treated to piped-in vibraphone versions of local nursery rhymes.

A few kinks showed up: the Olympic torch kept flickering out, and the first "suspicious package" swooped down on by security forces turned out to be full of toilet-seat warmers. But the point of the Olympics is to make embarrassment irrelevant. "Clinton has a chotto scandaru [little scandal]," a taxi driver chuckled last week. "It's a pity. No one will be thinking of our Olympics." As the Games began, the athletes were proving him--triumphantly--wrong.

--With reporting by Hannah Beech, Frank Gibney Jr. and Lawrence Mondi/Nagano

With reporting by Hannah Beech, Frank Gibney Jr. and Lawrence Mondi/Nagano