Tokyo Olympics: opening ceremony director sacked because of Holocaust joke

Published on : 07/22/2021 – 08:43

New blow for the Tokyo Olympics: the person in charge of the opening ceremony was dismissed from his post on Thursday, July 22 – the day before the launch – because of a joke on the Holocaust going back more than 20 years .

“We learned that in a past artistic performance,” Kentaro Kobayashi “used mocking language about a tragic historical fact,” Tokyo-2020 President Seiko Hashimoto told reporters.

“The organizing committee has decided to remove Mr. Kobayashi from his post,” she added.

The consequences of his ouster on the opening ceremony on Friday evening were still uncertain. “We are still thinking about how we can deliver the ceremony tomorrow,” said Hashimoto, adding that she wanted to draw conclusions “as quickly as possible”.

In a comedy sketch that aired on video in 1998, K. Kobayashi and another comedian imitated a famous host duo of a Japanese children’s television show.

By pretending to imagine a DIY activity where it would be a question of creating and installing small paper dolls, Kentaro Kobayashi then launched to his partner: “Those of the last time you said ‘let’s play the Holocaust ‘”, triggering laughter from the audience.

The duo then joked by imagining the anger of the producer of the show because of this reference to the Holocaust.

This skit, “which I had written, contained lines that were extremely inappropriate,” K. Kobayashi, an entertainment figure in Japan, apologized in a statement.

“It goes back to a time when I couldn’t make people laugh the way I wanted, and I think I was trying to get people’s attention in a thoughtless way,” he said.

Cascading scandals

The Simon-Wiesenthal Center for the fight against anti-Semitism and racism had condemned on Wednesday, in a statement, the past remarks of Kentaro Kobayashi, denouncing “malicious and anti-Semitic jokes”.

“No person, however creative, has the right to make fun of the victims of the genocide (committed by) the Nazis,” the organization wrote, ruling that “any association of that person with the Tokyo Games would insult the memory of six million Jews and make a mockery of the Paralympic Games “- K. Kobayashi has also joked about people with disabilities in other skits.

This dismissal comes just a few days after the resignation of Keigo Oyamada, composer of a musical theme for the opening ceremony.

Known under the pseudonym Cornelius, this Japanese artist had been caught up by interviews given in the 1990s. There he recounted, in a light tone, how he had persecuted classmates with disabilities in his youth.

In March, another artistic director of the Olympic Games, Hiroshi Sasaki, had also resigned for having suggested internally to disguise as pig a Japanese actress and star of social networks with assumed curves, Naomi Watanabe.

Earlier in February, the president of Tokyo-2020, former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, was also forced to step down due to sexist remarks that sparked a global uproar.

These cascading scandals have tarnished the image of these Olympics, already unpopular with a large part of the Japanese population who fear that the event will worsen the health crisis in the country.

Due to the restrictions in the face of the pandemic and the closed doors decided for almost all competitions, barely 950 VIPs are expected to attend the opening ceremony on Friday at the new Olympic stadium in Tokyo.

With AFP