Last month, Japan was accused of bungling its response to the coronavirus outbreak on the cruise ship Diamond Princess, which spent two weeks quarantined in Yokohama. And critics raised questions about whether Japan had waited too long to impose entry bans on people traveling from China when the epidemic was centered in Wuhan.

“I think that the prime minister would have been infinitely more bruised if the decision happened in the context of where Japan was just a few weeks ago,” said Mireya Solís, co-director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “There would have been questions about whether those responses would have cost Japan the Olympics or put people at risk.”

Now, Ms. Solís said, the fact that Mr. Abe was able to avoid an outright cancellation of the Games “will be seen as a skillful management.”

If the world can bring the coronavirus to heel in the next year, the postponed Games could serve as a “grand farewell a few months before Abe’s set to leave office,” said Tobias Harris, an expert on Japanese politics at Teneo Intelligence in Washington.

“It’s a big symbolic moment for Japan if the world is actually able to convene,” Mr. Harris said. “It becomes the ‘we’ve overcome the pandemic Games,’ and Japan gets to kind of be the orchestrator for that.”