THE Japanese designer of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games emblem, hit by a controversy over its similarity to a Belgian design, said Saturday he had never seen the other logo, after the Belgian designer hinted at legal action.

    Questions about whether the Tokyo emblem was too close to the logo for Belgium’s Theater de Liege erupted on social media earlier last week, after designer Olivier Debie drew attention to it, with many demanding an explanation.

    Debie said Thursday he was astonished by the resemblance and that the form of the letters was almost identical. He and the theater are consulting lawyers. “After seeing this, I have a hard time imagining that the graphic designers who worked on it have never seen my logo.”

    Kenjiro Sano, who designed the Tokyo emblem — a loose representation of the letter “T” that includes a red circle mirroring the Japanese flag — countered by saying his goal had been to create a distinctively Japanese design.

    “I had absolutely no previous knowledge of the design in question, and I certainly did not refer to it when creating my design,” Sano said in a statement.(SD-Agencies)