TOKYO — Naohisa Takato spent the past five years fixated on a vision.

He saw himself standing on the podium at the Nippon Budokan alongside Funa Tonaki with judo gold medals around their necks, basking in the cheers of their adoring home crowd on the opening night of the Tokyo Olympics.

When the moment finally arrived, Takato had the gold, but he wasn’t joined by Tonaki or the fans.

The feisty judoka still felt the virtual love from a nation that just might warm up to these trouble-plagued Tokyo Games after watching his brilliance in Japan’s beloved, homegrown martial art.

Takato won Japan’s first gold medal at its home Olympics, beating Taiwan’s Yang Yung-wei in the men’s 60-kilogram judo final to cap a series of dramatic victories that could erase some of his nation’s profound ambivalence about these trouble-plagued games.