Yosuke Moriwaki, a spokesman at Mitsui Real Estate, which had planned to spend the year after the Games redeveloping the Olympic Village into luxury condominiums, agreed that the postponement was bad, but better than the alternatives.

The decision has thrown the company’s plans into disarray, and it is uncertain how to proceed as it is forced to renegotiate deals with contractors and property owners. But if the Games had been canceled, the prestige and value that come from the Olympic brand “would have disappeared,” Mr. Moriwaki said.

Although companies like his may have avoided the worst outcome, the delay will undoubtedly cause large-scale economic disruption in Japan, which had planned on the economic lift from the Games to help overcome the downturn in the last three months of 2019, the sharpest in five years.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, many economists believed that the contraction would continue into the first half of this year, tipping the country into a technical recession — commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of shrinking production. But they had forecast that an influx of tourists this summer would propel the economy back into the moderate expansion it had experienced for the better part of the past decade.

Direct spending during the Olympic period in the Tokyo region alone was expected to reach several trillion yen, and the country could expect even more growth, according to official predictions, as it basked in the event’s afterglow.