The director of the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony has been sacked after historical footage emerged of Kentaro Kobayashi making jokes about the Holocaust in the latest scandal to hit the Games.
A clip was widely shared on Japanese social media on Wednesday showing Kobayashi, who is a comedian, in a TV skit from the 1990s, and there were strong calls for his dismissal. The Jewish human rights organisation Simon Wiesenthal Center released a statement condemning the jokes, saying: “Any person, no matter how creative, does not have the right to mock the victims of the Nazi genocide ... any association of this person to the Tokyo Olympics would insult the memory of six million Jews.”
More to follow...
