Koike will be joined at the Citizens' Plaza by, Kenichi Yoshizumi, Mayor of Shinjuku, and they will watch 46 runners from his local area as they take part in an alternative Torch lighting before the final daily cauldron is ignited by actor Kankuro Nakamura VI.

Later the Torch will be taken to the Olympic Stadium.

The penultimate day of the Olympic Torch Relay featured a very similar pattern in Shiba Park in Minato City.

Some 109 runners from the Meguro, Shibuya and Minato cities took part. 

Many of them struck poses before the exchange known as the kiss.

Speculation has been rising about who will light the Cauldron at the Opening Ceremony.

In the Japanese media, Masters golf champion Hideki Matsuyama is in the frame as a sportsman with a huge international profile.

In the COVID-19 pandemic the choice seems certain to be as symbolic as 1964, when university student Yoshinori Sakai was selected. 

He had been born on the fateful day when the atom bomb fell in Hiroshima in 1945.

The last time Japan hosted an Olympics in 1998, skater Midori Ito lit the Cauldron but the runner carrying the Flame into the stadium was as memorable. 

Former army officer Chris Moon had lost an arm and a leg during an accident in Mozambique while clearing landmines.

In 2020, marathon gold medallist Mizuki Noguchi was the first Japanese runner in Ancient Olympia, but this does not necessarily exclude her from carrying the final Torch.

Organisers might yet decide to involve the squad which won the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup. 

At the very start they carried the Torch at the J-Village in Fukushima back in March.

Were they also to light the final Cauldron together, they would invoke memories of when the United States' 1980 gold medal-winning ice hockey team - famed for their "Miracle on Ice" heroics - reunited in Salt Lake City to light the Cauldron in 2002.

There might yet be a desire to honour the two triple Olympic champions who were initially scheduled to collect the Flame at the handover in Athens last year.

Ultimately, they did not make the trip and instead displayed the Flame when it arrived at Matsushima air base.

Judoka Tadahiro Nomura won extra-lightweight titles at three consecutive Games from 1996 and wrestler Saori Yoshida equalled the feat in women’s freestyle from 2004 to 2012.

To use them would reinforce the message of gender equality, which the International Olympic Committee has advocated through its joint flagbearer initiative.

Gymnast Kōhei Uchimura, Olympic all-around champion in 2012 and 2016, would also offer a tribute to 1964 - when the late Yukio Endo was the outstanding male gymnast - and Japan's rich heritage in the sport.

Four-time tennis Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka is probably the best-known Japanese woman in sport internationally, but her first-round match against Zheng Saisai of China is scheduled for Saturday (July 24) at 11am, almost certainly ruling her out of contention.