What’s holding back Japan? The bullies.

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2021-07-21 10:00:05

Prior to the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, one of the big news stories was the resignation of the event’s musical composer. As reported by Japanese national broadcaster NHK, the story went like this:

[Keigo] Oyamada resigned as a composer for the ceremony on Monday, saying that his decision to accept the job was inconsiderate.

At the center of the controversy are decades-old magazine interviews in which he spoke of abusing his classmates and others, including students with disabilities.

I’ve recently spent quite a bit of time in Japan; not as a touris t or “fan of Japanese culture,” but as someone simply living a day-to-day life. Based on this experience, and from the stories quietly told to me by Japanese men and women — especially women — I immediately assumed that using the word “abuse” to describe what Keigo Oyamada did was probably downplaying some dark, sadistic behavior.

My suspicions were compounded by the fact that Japanese elite were defending Oyamada’s behavior, with the Olympics organizing committee saying, “in light of his sincere apology … we expressed a willingness to allow [him] to continue his work,” and NHK describing the situation as a mere “controversy” involving “decades-old” information. It looked like a classic situation in which a pack of bullies engage in tactics meant to defend one of their own — something I’d seen before in my own life.

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