The organizing committee of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will cease using an emblem that some critics said may have been plagiarized, NHK reported Tuesday.
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However, after meeting with IOC vice president John Coates on Tuesday, Olympic Minister Toshiaki Endo said Japan can not promise to meet that deadline.
Mr. Kenjiro has faced allegations of plagiarism since the logo’s debut in July. A design with two vertical parallel bars was picked for the Paralympic Games. Tokyo’s Olympic organizers, who had defended the logo as recently as last Friday, finally threw in the towel and abandoned it on Tuesday.
Sano allegedly altered part of a photo of a Tokyo airport lobby, replacing images of banners hanging from the ceiling with those of his Olympic logo.
An online petition with more than 22,000 signatures has called on officials to choose another image.
The unusual decision is the latest embarrassment for Japan as it prepares to hold the Games for the second time and follows its scrapping of plans for the new Olympic stadium, further blackening its self-proclaimed reputation as a “safe pair of hands” to host the sports extravaganza. The designer has sued the worldwide Olympic Committee over the issue.
Mr Sano subsequently acknowledged eight of the 30 designs used for a brewery’s promotional tote bags included copies of others’ works but, in that case, he blamed assistants saying they had “traced” the images and apologising for the oversight.
The logo has been embroiled in controversy since its release in July.
He also faces allegations that his design for a zoo in central Japan and another for a public museum outside Tokyo have close resemblance to others’ works that had been published before him.
Sano says his work is original.
Tokyo’s emblem is based around the letter “T” – for Tokyo, tomorrow and team – with a red circle said to represent a beating heart.
The theatre’s logo features a similar shape in white against a black background.
Japanese Olympic officials are still smarting over the national stadium fiasco after Abe ordered plans to be torn up in the face of growing anger over its cost.
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Last week, Japan said it would slash the cost of the showpiece venue by more than 40 percent, setting a cap of 155 billion yen ($1.28 billion) on construction costs.
