A Japanese Olympic opening ceremony musician apologized then resigned as a decades-old scandal resurfaced

• A 52-year-old musician apologized and resigned from his role at the Olympics opening ceremony.
• Comments made by musician Keigo Oyamada in the 1990s resurfaced ahead of the Games.
• In 1995, Oyamada told a magazine of disturbing bullying of school classmates he perpetrated as a child.

A Japanese musician who composed music for the Olympic opening ceremony has resigned after a horrific account of childhood bullying he perpetrated resurfaced.

Keigo Oyamada, a 52-year-old producer also known as "Cornelius," has created songs that are a staple part of "The 100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time," according to Rolling Stone Japan.

Oyamada had written music for the 2020 Olympic Games opening ceremony which takes place Friday in Tokyo. That work, which amounted to around four minutes of the ceremony, will now be removed, the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee said, per Japanese newspaper Nikkei

Scandal around Oyamada arose when a disturbing account of historical bullying he gave to a magazine in 1995 resurfaced in recent days, The Guardian said.

According to the Guardian, Oyamada said in a 1995 interview that when he was at school he once forced a boy with an intellectual disability to masturbate in front of other school children.

Oyamada also said he made the boy eat his own feces. He is also reported to have said that he trapped a child in a cardboard box.

The Guardian reported that Oyamada made the comments to Quick Japan magazine in 1995, and made a similar claim in another magazine a year earlier.

Oyamada apologized for these incidents Sunday, but did not initially resign.

"In my school days and at the time of the interviews, I was a very immature man who could not imagine how the victimised people felt," he said on his official website, according to Reuters.

The next day, Oyamada stood down from his role.

"I made arrangements with relevant parties and submitted my resignation to the organising committee," he announced on social media, Reuters said.

An Olympics plagued by controversy

The Oyamada scandal is not the only controversy surrounding an Olympic Games which has been beset by scandal and negative incidents.

The former president of the organizing committee, Yoshiro Mori, left his post earlier this year when he made sexist remarks, sparking widespread backlash.

Elsewhere, there are rising COVID infections, and a widespread distaste for the Games among Japanese citizens.

Earlier this week, one of Japan's blue-chip brands and a major corporate partner of Tokyo 2020, Toyota, said it will not show Olympics-related TV commercials during the games.

Another growing scandal is the case of a Ugandan weightlifter who has absconded from the Olympic Village, as reported by the Financial Times.