TOKYO — Just a day before the opening ceremony of the delayed Tokyo Summer Olympics, organizers of the Games dismissed Kentaro Kobayashi, the creative director of the ceremony, after video footage emerged of him making fun of the Holocaust in a comedic act in the 1990s.
At a press briefing on Thursday, Seiko Hashimoto, sounding beleaguered after a run of scandals that have plagued the Games and the creative staff of the opening ceremony in particular, said she had learned on Wednesday about the routine, in which Mr. Kobayashi joked about “massacring Jews” in a skit while miming the act of cutting up human figures made of paper.