The Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games launched the "One Team Project," an initiative in which Japan's leading creators, innovators and performers in a wide range of fields are being invited to express their own interpretations of the vision for the Tokyo 2020 Games. These influential figures will encourage the public to reach out to one another and unite behind the Games' vision. Tokyo 2020 on Thursday also launched a website dedicated to the project where participating celebrities can share their messages with the public. Dressed in formal kabuki attire, actor Ebizo Ichikawa XI offered a recorded kabuki-style salutation on the website. Ichikawa said, "As well as being the world's biggest sport spectacle, the Tokyo 2020 Games will also be a major festival of culture. This is a wonderful chance for Japanese people to rediscover their identity, and a golden opportunity to showcase the attractions of Japan to the world." Other Japanese artists and intellectuals who have volunteered to become part of the One Team include Kyogen actor Mansai Nomura, karate practitioner Kiyou Shimizu, musician Yoshiki, Nobel Prize-winning researcher Shinya Yamanaka, writer Mariko Hayashi and comedian and writer Naoki Matayoshi (IPC).
