Olympics opening ceremony director sacked for Holocaust joke

The show director of the Olympics opening ceremony has been dismissed, one day before the event is due to be held.

Footage of Kentaro Kobayashi from the 1990s recently emerged in which he seems to be making jokes about the Holocaust.

Japan’s Olympic chief Seiko Hashimoto said the video ridiculed “painful facts of history”.

The dismissal is the latest in a string of scandals to hit the Games.

It comes days after a composer quit the team creating the ceremony after it emerged he had bullied classmates with disabilities at school.

In March, creative chief Hiroshi Sasaki quit after suggesting that plus-size comedian Naomi Watanabe could appear as an “Olympic”. He later apologized.

Mr. Mori was quoted as saying women talked too much and that meetings with many female board directors would “take a lot of time”.

This latest scandal has seen former comedian Kobayashi strongly criticized for a sketch he performed 23 years ago, in which he and another comedian pretend to be children’s entertainers. Mr. Kobayashi then turns to his colleague, referring to some paper dolls, saying they are “the ones from that time you said ‘let’s play the Holocaust'”, according to news agency AFP.

“Any person, no matter how creative, does not have the right to mock the victims of the Nazi genocide,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean and global social action director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), said.

Mr. Kobayashi also issued a statement responding to his dismissal.

“Entertainment should not make people feel uncomfortable. I understand that my stupid choice of words at that time was wrong, and I regret it,” it said.