Author: Yamaguchi Mari
Associated Press
Tokyo (Associated Press)-The Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee fired the opening director on July 22 because he made a massacre joke in a 1998 comedy show.
The chairman of the organizing committee Hashimoto Seiko said the day before the opening ceremony that the director Kentaro Kobayashi had been removed. He was accused of using jokes about the Holocaust in his comedy performances, including the phrase “Let’s play the Holocaust”.
“We discovered that Mr. Kobayashi used a word in his own performance to laugh at historical tragedies,” Hashimoto said. “We apologize for causing such developments the day before the opening ceremony and causing troubles and worries to many interested parties, as well as the people of Tokyo and the whole country.”
Since winning the right to host the Olympic Games in 2013, Tokyo has been plagued by scandals. French investigators are investigating allegations of paying bribes to members of the International Olympic Committee to influence voting in Tokyo. Two years ago, Tsunekazu Takeda, chairman of the Japanese Olympic Committee and member of the International Olympic Committee, was forced to resign.
Soon after the video clips and scripts of Kobayashi’s performance were exposed, criticism flooded social media.
Rabia Braham Cooper, deputy dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Director of Global Social Action, a human rights organization in Los Angeles, said: “No one, no matter how creative, has no right to laugh at the victims of the Nazi genocide.”
He also pointed out that the Nazis used poison gas on disabled Germans.
He said: “Any connection between this person and the Tokyo Olympics will insult the memory of 6 million Jews and make cruel mockery of the Paralympics.”
Kobayashi is a former member of the popular comedy duo Rahmens, and is famous overseas for his comedy series including “Traditional Japan”.
