The Olympics have been hit with yet another scandal as footage of the opening ceremony's director was dismissed following the release of footage showing him making jokes about the Holocaust.
The video of Kentaro Kobayashi was from the 1990s but recently emerged, showing him making insensitive jokes, the BBC reported. The Olympic chief for Japan, Seiko Hashimoto, said that the video ridiculed "painful facts of history."
This is just the latest controversy to hit the games which have been plagued with the pandemic, beds meant to break when athletes use them for things other than sleep, and decisions to eliminate athletes who tested positive for the use of marijuana.
On top of that, it was announced earlier this week that a composer quit the team creating the ceremony after it was announced he had bullied classmates with disabilities. Then, in March, creative chief Hiroshi Sasaki quit after suggesting that plus-size comedian Naomi Watanabe could appear as an "Olympig."
Kobayashi is a former comedian who has been strongly criticized for the sketch he performed more than two decades ago, where he and another comedian pretended to be children's entertainers.
In the sketch, he turned to his colleague and referred to paper dolls as "the ones from that time you said 'let's play the Holocaust,'" according to the AFP news agency.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga spoke out on the sketch, saying his comments were "outrageous and unacceptable."
Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the U.S.-based Holocaust research body Simon Wiesenthal Center said that "any person, no matter how creative, does not have the right to mock the victims of the Nazi genocide."
In a statement about his dismissal, Kobayashi said that entertainment should make people feel uncomfortable.
"I understand that my stupid choice of words at that time was wrong, and I regret it," it said.
There has been a growing unease surrounding the games since they were canceled last summer due to the pandemic. In a recent poll, 55% of people in Japan were opposed to holding the games due to fear of the virus and the possibility of it spreading, Reuters reported.
It has also been reported that the complete cancelation of the games is not entirely off the table either. The chief of the games' organizing committee, Toshiro Muto, announced that if cases go up, the games could be canceled, Reuters reported.
The opening ceremony will be held on Friday, which Suga expects to go as planned, or as close to now that large groups of spectators will not be allowed. Those who will be present include a select group of people, including political dignitaries, due to a COVID-19 outbreak in the country.
"With the opening ceremony being so imminent, we apologize for causing concern to those involved in the Olympics, to the citizens of Tokyo and the Japanese public," Ms. Hashimoto said in a statement.