TOKYO — The Japanese musical maverick who composed some of the score for the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics has apologized after revelations

Tokyo 2020 Olympics composer apologizes for bullying disabled classmates

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2021-07-18 20:30:05

TOKYO — The Japanese musical maverick who composed some of the score for the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics has apologized after revelations about him bullying disabled classmates recently resurfaced.

The boasts that Keigo Oyamada, also known as “Cornelius,” made to Japanese magazines back in 1990s about how he tormented fellow students came back to haunt him less than a week before the games are to kick off on July 23.

Back in the 1990s, when his star was still on the rise, the now 52-year-old Oyamada, in interviews with local music magazines, recalled how he would, among other things, force a mentally-disabled boy to eat his own feces and masturbate in front of other students.

“These reflections were not looked back on regretfully, but instead were seen as funny childhood moments,” the popular ARAMA! JAPAN blog noted. “He spoke of them in a boastful nature.”

Often compared to pioneering American musicians like Beck and the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, Oyamada is best known in Japan as one of the originators of the kitschy Shibuya-kei sound, which drew heavily on American pop music from the 1960s produced by the likes of Burt Bacharach and Phil Spector.

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