Olympic Opening Director ‘Kentaro Kobayashi’ Fired For Holocaust Joke
The organisers of Tokyo Olympics, have fired the opening ceremony director of the show Kentaro Kobayashi, a day before the start of the event.
This comes as a footage, which was widely shared on Japanese social media on Wednesday, July 21, showed the comedian Kobayashi in a 1998 TV skit which included the line “Let’s play Holocaust”.
Earlier this week, the musical composer of the event, Keigo Oyamada, resigned after it emerged he had bullied classmates and boasted about it in a magazine interview.
The Olympics minister Seiko Hashimoto said they are currently investigating how to conduct tomorrow’s opening ceremony.
There have been string of scandals among high-ranking officials. In March the Olympics’ creative chief Hiroshi Sasaki was forced to resign after calling female comedian Naomi Watanabe an “Olympig” and suggesting she could wear pig ears at the opening ceremony.
In February the head of the Games’ organising committee Yoshiro Mori resigned after making sexist comments.
Mori, was quoted as saying women talk too much and that meetings with multiple female directors would “take a lot of time”.
Around 400 people withdrew from the Olympic volunteer programme after the comments were made.
The events, will officially begin with the opening ceremony at Tokyo’s National Stadium on Friday with no fans after spectators were banned due to the Covid-19 pandemic.