Advertising group owner Hiroshi Sasaki, originally hired to oversee the 2020 Paralympic ceremonies, was named senior creative director at the Tokyo Olympic Games and Paralympics on Wednesday.
The 66-year-old Sasaki will replace acclaimed kyogen actor Nomura Mansai in the role in which he will oversee a review of plans for the four opening and closing ceremonies for the games pushed back a year to 2021 due to coronavirus pandemic.
“I want to express progress or hope for the future (at the ceremonies),” Sasaki said at a news conference where Nomura was with him.
“This is an opportunity to change the tense image of Olympic rituals as flame stage performances,” he said, as the organizers tried to simplify the productions due to the pandemic.
Sasaki was in charge of the flag-handling ceremony at the Rio 2016 Olympics, in which former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was dressed as Super Mario, as well as the one-year countdown event at the Stadium National on July 23 featuring swimming star Rikako Ikee who is still living with leukemia.
The games organizing committee will suspend the activity of the seven-member planning team and Nomura will move to work with the organizing committee as a consultant.
In February, Nomura said nearly 80% of the work for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympic Games was completed. He was named lead creative director in July 2018.
Organizers said the ritual creative design team needed to be refreshed to create faster and more efficient workflows in the limited time they had left to prepare for the international multi-sport event .
Sasaki is also well-known in Japan for its major TV markets including a long-running series for telecoms company SoftBank Corp.
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