Organizers of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics have dismissed the director of the Opening Ceremony simply 24 hours earlier than the occasion is slated to start, the newest setback for an occasion already rife with controversy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Officers introduced Thursday that they dismissed Kentaro Kobayashi, a comic, after an anti-Semitic joke he made concerning the holocaust resurfaced in current days.

It is unclear how Koboyashi’s departure will have an effect on the Opening Ceremony, which is able to formally open the Olympics on Friday at 7 a.m. ET in Tokyo.

“How we will deal with the ceremony is presently being mentioned,” organizing committee president Seiko Hashimoto mentioned Thursday.

In line with NBC Information, Kobayashi’s 1998 joke included the phrase “Let’s play Holocaust.” The act has resurfaced in current days in Japanese media.

“We came upon that Mr. Kobayashi, in his personal efficiency, had used a phrase ridiculing a historic tragedy,” Hashimoto mentioned.

In line with NPR, Kobayashi’s resignation comes after the last-minute resignation of the ceremony’s composer, Keigo Oyamada. In current days, an interview he carried out within the Nineties has resurfaced wherein he boasted about bullying individuals with disabilities.

The controversies are simply the newest setbacks for the 2021 Video games, which had been already dealing with a mountain of challenges not but seen earlier than in Olympic historical past.

In line with Johns Hopkins, circumstances of COVID-19 are presently on the rise in Japan, with extra individuals being contaminated every day than when officers known as for a one-year delay within the Video games in 2020. And whereas deaths are down, Japan’s vaccine distribution program is lagging behind different nations — as of Thursday, simply 23% of the county’s inhabitants is absolutely vaccinated.

The 2021 Video games will happen in Tokyo beneath a state of emergency, and no spectators shall be allowed in venues — a few of which had been constructed particularly to host the Olympics.