The Music of Cruelty

The theme of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics opening ceremony was supposed to be diversity and harmony; the composer in charge of the music, Keigo Oyamada, tortured and bullied special needs students when he was young–and bragged about it. He literally made them eat shit, forced them to masturbate in public, ridiculed them, beat them up, and egged on other bullies. He gleefully boasted about his misdeeds in magazine interviews that resurfaced a day after his role in the Olympics was announced. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Committee said he’s apologized, so okay, and the games must go on.

The casual attitude the Tokyo Olympics Committee shows towards what he did also shows how the ruling elite in Japan really feel about people with disabilities. They don’t care. If they did, they might have spent some of the millions of dollars wasted on building fancy Olympic stadiums to make public transport in the city more barrier free. But that’s another issue.

Perhaps, as there are with many crimes, there should be a statute of limitation on terrible things said in the past, but the problem isn’t just Oyamada’s words; it’s his actions. But in another way, maybe he really does represent the spirit of the modern Olympics: bullying, venal, ignoring the misery of others, and placing victory above all else. If winning is the only thing that matters, then hey, it’s okay to beat up the losers, right?

Here are some choice quotes from his interviews in the January 1994 issue of music magazine, Rockin’ On Japan,  and the March 1995 issue of subculture magazine, Quick Japan. He was in his mid-twenties at the time of the interviews.

原文「うん。もう人の道に反して。。全裸にしてグルグルにひもを巻いてオナニーさしてさ。ウンコを喰わしたりさ。喰わした上にバックドロップしたりさ

“Yeah, I did inhuman things. I’d strip (one guy) naked and roll him up in cords and make (him) masturbate. I made him eat shit and then performed a belly- to-back-drop wrestling move on him.”

(Rockin’ On Japan)

原文「マットレス巻きにして殺しちゃった事件*とかあったじゃないですか、そんなことやってたし、跳び箱の中に入れたり　（学校の体育館倉庫で）

“Remember that case where kids rolled up another kid in a mattress and killed him? We did that sort of thing (to the special needs kid) and stuffed them in the vaulting horse…” (At a school gymnasium storage room)

*A boy died in Japan Jan. 13, 1993, after being rolled up in a mattress in the school gymnasium’s storeroom by bullies.

(Quick Japan)

Keeping Oyamada on as the composer for the Olympics Opening Ceremony makes a mockery of everything the Olympics is supposed to stand for. But then again, when the government of Japan and the IOC insist on holding the Olympics in the middle of a pandemic, ignoring all warnings of the public health risk, maybe he is the perfect composer. Who better to write an ode to the callous cruelty and winning-is-the-only-thing-that matters attitude of the IOC? And like the IOC, he probably stands to earn a lot of money from the Olympics that over 70% of the Japanese people don’t want.

—The Japan Subculture Research Editors