Cornelius Denies Bullying Incidents That Resulted In His Resignation From Tokyo Olympics

Japanese artist Keigo Oyamada, who is more commonly known as Cornelius, denies the bullying allegations in the aftermath of his resignation from the Olympics. In July, Cornelius resigned from the group of composers who were writing the opening ceremony for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics amidst the resurfacing of old interviews in which he apparently admitted to allegedly bullying and allegedly abusing schoolmates with disabilities.

At the time, Oyamada released a statement that read “​I sincerely apologize to my classmates and their parents who have been hurt by my words and actions, and I feel deep regret and responsibility for not being a good friend in school life, which is supposed to make good memories, but being in a position to hurt them.”

However, after the olympics and paralympics have ended, Oyamada is back tracking on his initial apology. He posted a statement on Instagram claiming that the interviews were taken out of context and he was misquoted.

“I had talked about bullying that I experienced at school when I was in elementary and junior high school,” Oyamada says. “The headlines of the widely reported Rockin’ On Japan, stated that I had forced my classmates to eat feces and masturbate. I had never forced my classmates to do such acts or ever make any suggestions to do so.”

“In one story, I spoke of on the way home from elementary school where a classmate said jokingly that he could eat dog feces that was on the side of the road and picked it up and put it in his mouth and immediately spat it out,” Oyamada explains. “All the children there laughed, including the classmate who performed the act. The other story is that I forced a classmate to masturbate, which I also did not do. The perpetrator was a senior student who was older and intimidating to us. I mentioned during that interview that I had witnessed outrageous violence, beyond my moral limits, when I was a student and that I had become withdrawn and distanced myself from these people.”

The claririfcation does come a bit late based on his initial response to the claims, which he apologized for. He apologized for not correcting this “misinformation” from the start and for his “vulgar” language across the interviews.