Photo/Illutration Saburo Kawabuchi, former president of the Japan Football Association, whom Yoshiro Mori asked to succeed him as the Tokyo Olympics chief, at a meeting in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward in February 2020 (Pool)

With the whole world watching closely to see who will replace embattled Yoshiro Mori as the Tokyo Olympic chief, a U.S. expert said the wrong message was sent again. 

Jules Boykoff, a former professional soccer player who teaches political science at Pacific University in Oregon, said Mori's attempt to have an old pal succeed him sparked even more controversy.

Mori, 83, sought to have Saburo Kawabuchi, 84, a former president of the Japan Football Association, take the baton after he decided to resign due to outrage over his misogynistic comments. 

Kawabuchi reportedly wept at Mori’s fate when the two met and discussed the change on Feb. 11, but the former JFA president declined to take the post. 

Boykoff says Mori's attempt speaks even more about the depth of sexism in Japan.

“If the Tokyo Organizing Committee were serious about gender equality, they would widen the pool and find a qualified individual who could fill the role and doesn’t happen to be an octogenarian man,” Boykoff said on Feb. 11. “The whole world was watching the (Mori debacle).”

Boykoff, who published an opinion piece on the NBC News website calling for Mori’s resignation, said, “He should have resigned before, but I think better late than never.” 

Mori’s remarks were “absolutely offensive,” Boykoff said in an interview with The Asahi Shimbun. “There is no place in sports for comments like that, as well as in the 21st-century society.”

Boykoff has been a vocal critic of sexism embedded within the history of the Olympics and has written four books on the quadrennial sporting event, including “NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Beyond.”

“The Olympics is a huge global stage, and what happens on that global stage gets global attention," he said. "If they do hire yet another 80-plus-year-old man for the job, it sends a clear message to the world how seriously they take gender equality.”

Boykoff said the Mori debacle has revealed that the problem runs much deeper and goes beyond the former prime minister.

“It is about how in a lot of ways the Olympic structure gives permission for sexism and it creates an atmosphere in which sexism is not punished.”

Boykoff wrote in the NBC News opinion piece that the International Olympic Committee, “which is about two-thirds male, used the (Mori) debacle as an opportunity to trumpet its own gender-equality bona fides.”

“In truth, though, the IOC has its own grim history of sexism,” he wrote, pointing out, “Women were not allowed to join the IOC as members until 1981.”

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