Kazumasa Nagai, the Japanese designer who was head of the committee that chose the logo by designer Kenjiro Sano for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, contested the Liège theatre’s complaint on Wednesday.
“The Belgians say Mr Sano’s logo is plagiarism, but the Belgian theatre’s emblem is in no way similar to the original logo created by Mr Sano”, said Kazumasa Nagai, 86. “The original concept and the changes made to it bear no resemblance to the Belgian logo”.
“Mr Sano’s original drawing does not include the part that looks like an “L” in the bottom right, which the Liège theatre says is similar to their logo”, said Mr Nagai. “The original logo has been revised several times, and there was a special effort to avoid any resemblance to an existing emblem”, he added.
The eight members of the committee selected three candidates out of the 104 propositions they received, before finally settling on the drawing submitted by Kenjiro Sano, 43. “Kenjiro Sano is known to be a very busy designer, and would not have checked whether members of his team had copied something”, said Kazumasa Nagai.
(Source: Belga)
