Ryohei Miyata, President of the Tokyo University of the Arts, will head the Tokyo 2020 Emblem Select Committee ©Tokyo 2020

Ryohei Miyata, President of the Tokyo University of the Arts, has been appointed head of the Tokyo 2020 Emblems Selection Committee while membership of the panel has also been confirmed.

On a busy day for Tokyo 2020 in which five sports have also been recommended for inclusion, choosing a new emblem is a priority after an initial choice designed by Kenjiro Sano was scrapped earlier this month following allegations of plagiarism.

A Preliminary Committee was subsequently set-up, also headed by Miyata, in order to decide the membership of the Selection Committee, with the first meeting of that body due to take place tomorrow.

Miyata, who was appointed by the Olympic and Paralympic Organising Committee's Executive Board, will be joined by the five other members of the Preliminary Committee, including Ai Sugiyama, a former professional tennis player and television sports commentator, Keiichi Tadaki, a lawyer and former prosecutor general, and Takeshi Natsuno, guest professor at the Graduate School of Media and Governance of Keio University.

Also returning is Mari Christine, an inter-cultural communications specialist and media personality, and Hiroshi Yamamoto, professor at Hosei University's Faculty of Sports and Health Studies and a former announcer and commentator for Japan's national broadcasting organisation, NHK. 

They will be joined by 13 other figures representing a "broad cross-section of Japanese society", including four professors with experience in designing.

The initial Tokyo 2020 emblem design was scrapped after a lawsuit was filed against it for plagiarism ©Tokyo 2020/Liege Theatre
The initial Tokyo 2020 emblem design was scrapped after a lawsuit was filed against it for plagiarism ©Tokyo 2020/Liege Theatre

These four are Ryoichi Enomoto from Kyoto University of Art and Design, Yuko Hasegawa from Musashino Art University, Hiroshi Kashiwagi from Musashino Art University and Kei Matsushita from Tokyo University of the Arts

Artist Fayuko Matsui is also included along with figures including attorney Izumi Hayashi, World Children's Baseball Foundation chairman Sadaharu Oh, Nissan vice-chairman Toshiyuki Shiga and Paralympic shooter Aki Taguchi.

This all comes after a lawsuit against the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was dropped last week by the Théâtre de Liège in Belgium following plagiarism accusations against the initial Tokyo 2020 emblem.

Logo designer Olivier Debie is, however, pressing ahead with his case after filing a lawsuit in a Belgian court last month, claiming Sano's Olympic design was plagiarised from a logo he made for the theatre in Liege.

He launched his case in conjunction with the theatre, the copyright holder of the logo, demanding €50,000 (£36,000/$56,000) to be paid by the IOC and other organisations each time the now scrapped emblem is used.

The full panel membership can be accessed here.



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