The director of the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony has been fired over a Holocaust joke made during a comedy routine in 1998.
The country’s Olympics chief Seiko Hashimoto said on Thursday that Japanese entertainer Kentaro Kobayashi had been dismissed, a day before the show was scheduled to air.
Mr Kobayashi, 48, had decades earlier “used a phrase ridiculing a historical tragedy,” she said, according to the AP.
“We deeply apologise for causing such a development the day before the opening ceremony and for causing troubles and concerns to many involved parties as well as the people in Tokyo and the rest of the country,” she said.
