In 2020, COVID-19 outbreak that had begun outside Japan at the end of the previous year quickly spread around the world. In March, a decision was made to postpone the Tokyo 2020 Games by one year. In April, a state of emergency was declared As COVID-19 became better understood, the national govern-ment and local governments began to take comprehensive measures to prevent the spread of infection and ensure the safety of events and implemented a va-riety of creative measures in car-rying out cultural programmes.In June 2020, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra held a trial performance to gather data about the movement of droplets in each section of the orchestra and distances between performers with the help of aerosol measurement experts and infectious disease specialists. After findings were made, performances gradually resumed, and the TOKYO MET SaLaD MUSIC FESTIVAL was held in September.Art galleries and museums began to reopen with an admission-by-reservation system for exhibitions, and The UKIYO-E 2020 Japan’s Three Great Ukiyo-e Collections was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum from July 2020, along with other exhibitions. Halls and theatres in Tokyo such as the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan and Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre also resumed performances while implementing infection control measures for entering and exiting the venue, reducing the number of seats available (e.g., arranging seating in a checkerboard pattern) and asking audiences to forbear from vocalised cheering.In the fall of that year, the Tokyo Festival 2020 was held with the theme ‘To Meet or Not to Meet?’ Implementation methods that were born out of COVID-19 pandemic were utilised, as technology-based productions such as Dark Master VR (Niwa Gekidan Penino), a play using virtual reality (VR) technology in which the VR goggle-wearing audience members were seated as if at the counter of a diner, was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, and the APAF (Asian Performing Arts Farm), a human resources development project, was held online.In addition to the impacts of measures to prevent droplet transmission, some programmes were severely impacted by international travel restrictions and measures to control the flow of people. For example, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo’s exhibition Olafur Eliasson: Sometimes the river is the bridge by Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur ELIASSON was rescheduled due to COVID-19. As the artist was unable to visit Japan due to travel restrictions, the production of the exhibition was performed by the museum management and the installation was supervised remotely. Also, for the Edo-Tokyo Museum’s special exhibition Ancient Egypt – The Creation of the World, the original plan was for a curator from each department of the Egyptian Museum of Berlin to visit Japan to supervise the exhibition, but due to travel restrictions a deputy curator came to Japan instead and supervised the exhibition remotely with a local curator.The Special 13 After-school Diversity Dance also had to be changed 158Global spread of COVID-19Implementation of cultural programmes during the COVID-19 pandemicin seven prefectures. In light of these circumstances, most of the Tokyo Tokyo FESTIVAL programmes were postponed as the timing and methods of implementation were placed under review, and a decision was made to refrain from large-scale events and shift the focus to online.When COVID-19 was spreading in 2020, there was no effective vaccine or treatment, therefore the policy was to prevent the spread of the disease. As a result, many everyday activities had to be reviewed or suspended and schools were closed. In order to avoid the three Cs (closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings), people were asked to refrain from non-essential outings and non-urgent activities in order to ensure social distancing.Various art and cultural activities other than the Tokyo Tokyo FESTIVAL were also cancelled or postponed, and many public and private museums, halls and theatres in Tokyo were temporarily closed.Under these circumstances, the TMG launched the Support Program for Arts and Culture to keep the light of culture alive. This was the first artist support programme of its kind initiated by the TMG, and it consisted of two types of programmes: an individual programme to support professional artists and arts sector workers who were forced to stop their activities, and a stage programme to support performances by arts and cultural organisations. In both cases, the artists and others were supported in their activities by the dissemination of their works online, and many Tokyo residents were provided with opportunities to experience art regardless of their location or time zone.The first emergency declaration issued for Tokyo was lifted at the end of May 2020. It was followed by a second emergency declaration in January 2021 (lifted in March), a third in April (lifted in June) and a fourth in July (lifted in September). Following the government’s basic policy for dealing with COVID-19 in line with the Act on Special Measures against Novel Influenza, etc., each industry established guidelines for both preventing the spread of infection and proceeding industrial activities from an early stage. It was decided that each of Tokyo Tokyo FESTIVAL’s cultural programmes would be implemented in accordance with these guidelines.Furthermore, there were significant restrictions on inviting guests from overseas during COVID-19 pandemic, and this had a notable impact on foreign programmes, such as The Speed of Light (Marco CANALE, Argentina) and The Constant Gardeners (Jason Bruges Studio, United Kingdom), as well as special exhibitions held at art galleries and museums in Tokyo that had arranged for exhibits to come from overseas.6.7.
元のページ ../index.html#162