New scandal at the Olympics.
A few days after the resignation of the Japanese musician Keigo Oyamada, composer of the opening ceremony, pinned for harassing the disabled in his youth, it is the turn of the artistic director Kentaro Kobayashi to pay the cost of the cleaning undertaken by the Committee organizer of the Tokyo Olympics.
“We learned that during 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.
"I was trying to get people's attention in a thoughtless way"
At issue, a 1998 sketch in which Mr. Kobayashi and another actor 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, Mr. Kobayashi had launched to his partner: "the ones from 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.
Kentaro Kobayashi, an influential figure in the entertainment world in Japan, apologized and admitted some "inappropriate" jokes.
“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 added.
But the Olympic committee did not hesitate to dismiss it, on the eve of the opening ceremony.
The consequences of his ouster for the opening ceremony on Friday night 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".