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Also known by his moniker Cornelius (CORNELIUS（コーネリアス）, Kōneriasu), is a Japanese musician and producer who co-founded Flipper's Guitar, an influential Shibuya-kei band, and subsequently embarked on a solo career. In 1997, he released the album Fantasma, which landed him praise from American music critics, who called him a "modern-day Brian Wilson" or the "Japanese Beck". In 2007, Rolling Stone Japan named two of Oyamada's albums amongst the "The 100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time", with Fantasma ranking in 10th place and Camera Talk by Flipper's Guitar ranking in 35th pl
Also known by his moniker Cornelius (CORNELIUS（コーネリアス）, Kōneriasu), is a Japanese musician and producer who co-founded Flipper's Guitar, an influential Shibuya-kei band, and subsequently embarked on a solo career. In 1997, he released the album Fantasma, which landed him praise from American music critics, who called him a "modern-day Brian Wilson" or the "Japanese Beck". In 2007, Rolling Stone Japan named two of Oyamada's albums amongst the "The 100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time", with Fantasma ranking in 10th place and Camera Talk by Flipper's Guitar ranking in 35th place.
In interviews in 1994 and 1995, Oyamada said that he had bullied and assaulted several students with disabilities in school. In one interview, Oyamada dismissed the incidents with a laugh. In a 1995 interview for Quick Japan Oyamada said he had locked a disabled student in a vaulting box, wrapped another student in gymnastics mattresses and kicked them, forced a student to eat their excrement, taped a cardboard box around a student's head and poured chalk inside, made fun of a disabled student running a long-distance race, and forced a student to masturbate in front of other students. A dialogue between Oyamada and the victims was planned by the magazine Rockin'On Japan, but all of the victims refused to meet him. One of the victims' mothers picked up the phone and told Oyamada her son had considered suicide.
I bullied many classmates. I think I bullied them really really badly. I take this opportunity to apologize (laughs).
Have you come to any conclusions about whether or not you feel guilty?
Hmmm... But I think that everyone is like this. People who bully. I don't feel guilty about it at all.
—Keigo Oyamada ("Rockin'On Japan", January 1994)
On July 14, 2021, the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (TOCOG) announced that Oyamada would be a composer of the 2020 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, with the concept being "the ability to celebrate differences, to empathise, and to live side by side with compassion for one another". The announcement caused a social media backlash, with many questioning Oyamada's involvement.
On July 16, 2021, a week before the opening ceremony, Oyamada tweeted an apology, but also said articles had contained exaggerations or mistakes that he had not corrected. On the same day, the TOCOG issued a statement stating they were unaware of the interviews and that while Oyamada's actions were "very inappropriate", they had not dismissed him from the ceremony. Toshirō Mutō, the chief executive of the Organizing Committee and ex-chairman of Kaisei Academy, said he wanted Oyamada to remain. On July 19, Oyamada decided to leave the creative team for the Tokyo Olympics.
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