TOKYO (Reuters) – Yoshiro Mori, president of the organizing committee of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, is to resign over sexual comments he made about women talking too much, Fuji News Network said Thursday.
The comments, made at a meeting of the board of the Japanese Olympic Committee in the first week of February, sparked a fire storm at home and abroad and could be the latest obstacle to the Games Summer 2020, which has already been postponed for a year due to coronavirus pandemic.
Mori appears to be announcing his plans to resign on Friday when organizers of the Tokyo Olympics hold a gathering of members of the governing body, the daily newspaper Mainichi reported. The meeting was arranged according to what Mori said.
At a soon-to-be-announced press conference on Feb. 4, Mori, 83, withdrew his remarks and said they were “inappropriate” and against the spirit of the Olympics, but he refused, at the time. that is, his retirement.
When pressed about whether he actually thought women were talking too much, he said: “I haven’t listened to women for so long lately, so I don’t know”.
A former Prime Minister whose assassination and winds blew, Mori’s comments drew sharp comments on social media and in parliament, with opposing lawmakers calling for his resignation.
The Tokyo Games had overcome a number of hurdles, including balloon charges and a plagiarism scandal involving the official logo, before it was ruled out by the coronavirus pandemic.
Nearly 80 percent of Japan’s population is opposed to hosting the Summer Games as scheduled this year due to concerns about the coronavirus, recent censuses show.
Reciting with Elaine Lies and Takashi Umekawa; Edited by Kim Coghill, Robert Birsel, Raju Gopalakrishnan