Sasaki had to manage the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer. However, the 66-year-old man resigned this morning.
He did so after the magazine Shukan Bunshun announced on Wednesday that he had the idea within a planning group last year to have the Japanese actress Naomi Watanabe – a fashion icon with a curvier – play the role of an “Olympig”.
“That was a very inappropriate expression of my ideas and comments,” Sasaki said in a statement to the Olympic organizing committee on Thursday morning. He says he wanted to make a play on words with “olympic” and olympig “(Pig is the English word for pig, ed.).
“I sincerely apologize to Watanabe and the people who were uncomfortable with that content. I thought it was a funny idea, but the male staff immediately whistled me back. I regret it.”
The incident comes weeks after Yoshiro Mori had to step aside under severe pressure as chairman of the organizing committee following sexist comments about women in board roles.
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