Fans were barred from the opening ceremony, but a few volunteers were ‘lucky to be here.’

TOKYO — Norie Kosaka knew better than to get her hopes up. A volunteer at the Games, she had been assigned to work at the opening ceremony on Friday night and assumed she would be one of the workers placed outside Olympic Stadium or tucked into some faraway corridor.

Instead, her supervisors informed her that she would be stationed inside the lower bowl of stands, just a few rows from the glittering, hourslong extravaganza. Her heart swelled.

“They told me, ‘You can watch a little bit,’” she said about her bosses. “So I was very happy.”

Kosaka’s job was to monitor one of the seating areas, and she took it seriously. But a few peeks would be OK, she figured. She smiled and pointed to her head.

“I want to put it in my memory,” she said.

Kosaka, 54, a manager at a bank in Tokyo, was one of the few locals who would even have the chance to do so.

Fans have been barred from the Olympics this year because of the pandemic. As a result, the 68,000-seat stadium was almost devoid of spectators on Friday night. An endless span of vacant seats formed a bleak backdrop to the multicolor spectacle unfolding on the infield in front of her.

The crowd that had access was small and exclusive: sponsors and sports officials, dignitaries and journalists, no party representing the populist spirit of fandom the Olympic Games purport to represent.

“I’m lucky,” Kosaka said. “I wish more people could see this.”