Driving out of central Tokyo, there is a sombre sight as you pass the Kawasaki docks. Quietly towed to a discreet inlet, hiding while officials decide if the Olympic Games can ever be held safely, are the five enormous red symbolic rings that should have been floating in Tokyo Bay.
This may be an extreme example of enforced brand-bashfulness. But the Covid-19 era, with its unending round of cancellation, contraction and closure, has been particularly hard on logos. Done well, a logo is about vitality, excitement and certainty: the pandemic has made all three a supremely tough sell.
But from Osaka a courageous exception has emerged: a logo that resembles an internal organ with eyeballs, and pulsates so fervidly with life that you sense Japan’s second city knows something that the rest of the country — even the rest of the world — does not. It is fearless salesmanship from a city that represents Japan’s mercantile, contrarian gut.