The Japanese leg began in Fukushima,[2] and ended in Tokyo's New National Stadium, the main venue of the 2020 Olympics.

Toyota, NTT, ENEOS, Nippon Life, JAL, ANA and Japan Post Holdings are the presenting partners of the relay, with the slogan being "Hope Lights Our Way".

[9][10] The traditional lighting ceremony was held on 12 March 2020 at Olympia, Greece, and the torch was handed over to the first torchbearer, Anna Korakaki.

[16] On 13 March, a small ceremony was held in Sparta, the notable torchbearer was Scottish actor Gerard Butler, known for playing Leonidas in the movie 300 in commemorating with the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae.

[18] After the postponement of the Summer Olympics to 2021, the torch display remained in Fukushima for at least a month before subsequently moved to Tokyo.

The following table is taken from the original 2020 schedule:[20] Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and several prefectures declared state of emergency amid COVID-19 surge, many of the public stages of the relay were truncated to be more ceremonial rather than functional such as alternative events.

[23] At the 2020 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, the flame was transported to Japan National Stadium by judoka Tadahiro Nomura and wrestler Saori Yoshida, then the torch followed by the trio of baseball greats (Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima and Hideki Matsui), until they passed to Hiroki Ohashi (大橋博樹 Ōhashi Hiroki) and Junko Kitagawa (北川順子 Kitagawa Junko), a doctor and a nurse helped to save lives during the pandemic as they carried the flame to Paralympian and wheelchair marathoner Wakako Tsuchida as passed to a group of students from Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures who were born before the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami until they handed the torch to tennis player Naomi Osaka, who would go on to light the Olympic cauldron; during the Olympics, Osaka would compete for Japan in the women's tennis competition before being eliminated in the third round.