Japanese musician Keigo Oyamada said Monday he has tendered his resignation from the creative team for the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics after admitting that he bullied children with disabilities many years ago.
Oyamada’s resignation, coming just before Friday’s opening ceremony, is the latest occurrence to beset the Olympics, which will be held mostly without spectators amid the coronavirus pandemic.
It followed days of controversy over his confessions in magazines published in the 1990s in which he boasted about bullying people in his childhood.
Photo shows Japanese musician Keigo Oyamada, taken in October 2006. (Kyodo)
Oyamada, who was in charge of composing some of the music for the opening ceremony of the Olympics, had apologized for bullying disabled classmates in the past but continued to stir an outcry on social media with growing calls for him to step down.
The well-known rock musician admitted last week that interviews published in the January 1994 edition of the magazine “Rockin’On Japan” and in the August 1995 edition of the magazine “Quick Japan” had quoted him correctly when he spoke about bullying childhood classmates with disabilities “without any regrets.”
The bullying and subsequent boasts about it have sparked anger on social media just a few days before the start of the Olympics.
While recognizing Oyamada’s actions as “inappropriate,” games organizers have said they would not remove his music from the opening ceremony. They said Oyamada has apologized and regrets his actions, and that he “currently devotes himself to creative activities with a high sense of morality.”
“Considering the timing, I hope he will continue to support and contribute” to the opening ceremony, said Tokyo 2020 CEO, Toshiro Muto, on Saturday, a day after he apologized in a tweet.
“I sincerely feel that such acts and language must be criticized,” Oyamada said, adding he has felt guilty about it for a long time and that he hopes to contact the people he bullied to issue a personal apology.
He said he feels “deep regret and responsibility” for what he describes as his “extremely immature” actions.
Japan’s top government spokesman Katsunobu Kato said Monday that “bullying and abuse are acts that must not happen and are utterly intolerable, regardless of whether a person has a disability or not.”
The chief Cabinet secretary said he hopes the organizing committee “deals appropriately” with the matter.
Ahead of the Tokyo Paralympics set to start Aug. 24, Kato said, “We would like to firmly deliver the spirit of ‘barrier-free’ toward realizing an inclusive society.”
Yoichiro Yamazaki, editor-in-chief of Rockin’On Japan, also apologized for running the interview with Oyamada, saying “It was the wrong thing to do from the point of view of morals and sincerity.”
“I offer a deep apology to all the victims and their families as well as to those who felt displeasure reading the story,” said Yamazaki, who interviewed Oyamada for the story in question.
Oyamada, a former member of “Flipper’s Guitar” along with Kenji Ozawa, went solo under the stage name Cornelius in 1993. He gained popularity among the young for the “Shibuya-kei” pop music sound in the 1990s.
The scandal is not the first to rock the Tokyo Games, which will finally start after a one-year postponement due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori stepped down in February as head of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee after coming under fire at home and abroad for saying meetings with women tend to “drag on” because they talk too much.
The Summer Games’ creative director, Hiroshi Sasaki, also resigned in March after it was revealed he had privately suggested plus-sized celebrity Naomi Watanabe dress as a pig for the opening ceremony to play the role of an “Olympig.”
U.S. media also reported on the scandal, with broadcaster NBC, whose parent NBCUniversal Media LLC has the rights to broadcast the Tokyo Games, saying in its story on Sunday that on social media, “critics were far from forgiving” despite Oyamada’s apology.
It included in the story a tweet that read, “How can a person who committed such discriminatory and violent acts to be considered qualified for getting involved in Olympic and Paralympic Games?”
The Associated Press also said Oyamada’s past acts are sparking a backlash on social media, with people demanding his resignation.
