On Feb. 3, when former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, then-president of the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, explained his sexist views on how women act in meetings, he was speaking at an extraordinary meeting of the Japanese Olympic Committee Council that the media could only watch remotely, and which they were not allowed to record. Had it been a regular meeting of the JOC, they would have been banned completely. However, reporters soon had access to the minutes and conveyed Mori's startling remarks to the world.

Mori had attended in order to provide his "private opinion" about the government's directive to increase female participation on executive boards of sports organizations, including the council, to at least 40%. He said that increasing female membership might be counterproductive since women take too much time expressing themselves. Reportedly, some people in the room reacted with laughter.

However, all hell broke loose on the internet after the meeting's contents were revealed. Mori gave a hastily organized news conference the next day in which he apologized and tried to retract his comment by claiming that his intelligence about women in meetings was not entirely first-hand, but related to him by others. He said Yasuhiro Yamashita, head of the JOC, had previously indicated to him that it would be difficult to increase the number of women on the council, so he was trying to lend his support.