Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
As you likely know by now, there’s a major ongoing Japanese entertainment story, as Johnny Kitagawa’s rampant sexual abuse has continued to be exposed. However, based on the requests I’m getting and the general lack of English-language coverage of some of the recent events that have unfolded, I will try to keep up with this*.
*I’m admittedly not as plugged in to the J-pop scene, so feel free to send tips or make requests or whatever. It’ll probably help.
I’m sure I’ve missed things in this summation of news stories, so feel free to let me know if that’s the case. Tracking these things is easier in K-pop due to the sheer amount of translations available, but some of the few J-pop news sites that still exist don’t even want to bother for one reason or another.
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Anyway, following the BBC documentary, Asian Junkie has covered two victims who came forward publicly against Kitagawa, as Kauan Okamoto (Johnny’s Jr.) and Shiga Yasunobu (Ninja) both detailed their experiences to the press.
There have been many others who’ve came forward since then, however, like Hashida Yasushi (Johnny’s Jr.) and Takahashi Ryu (Johnny’s Jr.).
Yasushi Hashida, a 37-year-old dancer and actor, told a hearing of Japan’s Diet, the national legislature, that he was sexually assaulted by Kitagawa twice when he joined the agency at age 13.
Yasushi Hashida, another victim, at a press conference said, “I’ve been trying to respond to as many interview requests as possible… in many instances, reporters have apologized to me quite profusely that they were unable to cover this matter in the past. In my mind what’s done is done. What’s important is to not repeat the past and to not engage in any more tacit agreements.”
And Ryu Takahashi, another former Johnny’s teen idol, said he was one of the lucky ones to successfully rebuff Kitagawa’s attempted sexual advances. (He described in detail an episode of being invited to Kitagawa’s luxury home and being offered a massage by the aged CEO that quickly turned sexual, only ending after the singer and dancer, then just 16, shouted, “No!”).
Takahashi described the current Johnny’s president’s apology as an “act of desperation” and rejected the company’s claim that it was unaware of the multi-decade rumors and allegations of sexual abuse by the founder.
“There were rumors, and a court also handed down a ruling in a lawsuit against Shukan Bunshun,” Takahashi, now 31, told Tokyo’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper. “It does not make sense if someone who was a director and later succeeded [Kitagawa] as president says she did not know.”
Notably, they talk about reporters apologizing to them for not covering this and not believing that current Johnny’s executives had no knowledge of what was going on. I don’t think anybody reasonable would be surprised by either of those things, but I still think there’s value to it being explicitly said publicly instead of it being able to be kept shrouded behind nods of the head.
Another victim that came out who hasn’t been in English-language coverage much is Nihongi Akimasa (Johnny’s Jr.), who was 13 when he was abused, and he also talked about hearing others were victims as well.
Nihongi said, “In the year and a half that I was enrolled in the office, I heard about a dozen victims, including those from Johnny’s Jr., who was about to enter the office”.
Nihongi recalled, “I used to share my experiences of sexual abuse with the juniors on a daily basis. There were also people who were subjected to acts that escalated”.
When asked why he was unable to report the damage to others while information was being shared among the juniors, he replied, “Since then, there have been books that expose the damage, and the general public has heard (rumours) about it. I think there were a lot of people who were harassed, but there was no movement in the media”.
Worth noting that he’s yet another victim that didn’t feel empowered by the press, for everybody who claims “everybody knows anyway” as a justification for not covering something.
Nihongi confessed that he was sexually assaulted by Mr. Johnny at a hotel three months after he auditioned for Johnny’s office when he was in the first year of junior high school in 1996 and started working as a junior.
Nihongi said, “My body stiffened due to Mr. Johnny’s unexpected behavior, and I wondered what would happen if I resisted the president of the agency, and thought that I would lose my job, so I couldn’t refuse”.
After being sexually assaulted more than 10 times in half a year, he left the office after about a year and a half of activities, but Johnny’s actions remained traumatic and had a great impact on his life.
Nihongi said, “My self-esteem was destroyed. At that time, I couldn’t resist, so I felt like I couldn’t do anything”.
Like others, he says there was wide-spread knowledge of the sexual abuse, and he estimates a truly horrifying number of potential victims.
When asked about other victims, Nihongi said, “During the year and a half that I was enrolled at Johnny & Associates, I heard directly from the mouths of about 10 juniors who were about to enter the facility about their experiences of being sexually assaulted. There may be some people who didn’t share it with the juniors around them, and Johnny’s office had a strict hierarchical relationship, so it wasn’t an environment where you could easily talk to seniors who entered earlier than us. I didn’t hear about the experiences of sexual abuse from my seniors”.
When asked, “How many victims have you suffered in total?”, Nihongi replied, “I can’t figure out how many, but it wouldn’t be strange if there were about 300 victims, even if it’s a low estimate, the actual assault damage may be even bigger”.
After being sexually assaulted, what kind of follow-up did Mr. Johnny give? Mr. Nihongi said, “I was also handed 10,000 yen. I had the impression that it was a reward for sexual activity, or that it was handed over as a hush fee”
When asked, “Why didn’t the sexual assault come to light?”, Nihongi said, “This was held in a closed space called a training camp. I believe that Mr. Kitagawa Johnny had tremendous power and created an environment where people around him could not interfere”.
Around the same time, Nakamura Kazuya (Johnny’s Jr.) also came forward as a victim of Kitagawa.
Nakamura said, “It was October 19th, 2002 when I was assaulted. The reason why the date is clear is that there was a concert commemorating Tackey & Tsubasa’s debut at Tokyo Dome on this day”.
Nakamura also performed, and since there was the same performance the next day, I decided to stay at Mr. Johnny’s house. He recalls that about five people stayed there that day. He was sleeping next to three juniors in an upstairs room. Nakamura was in the middle. It was late at night.
“He entered the futon from my feet and immediately recognized him as Mr. Johnny. I was scared and couldn’t move. I was familiar with it, so I was also shocked. When I was being assaulted, I imagined that I was being assaulted by a girl and I just wanted him to finish. I feel that it was quite long. I think it was about 30 minutes. The next morning, I was having breakfast with Mr. Johnny and the other juniors. Under the table, his foot was rubbed against the top of my foot. That was terrifying again”.
Nakamura, who was in the third year of junior high school and was 15 years old, immediately left junior activities due to preparing for exams.
Nakamura said, “After that, one of my good friends, Junior, contacted me and said, ‘Come and stay here because Johnny is calling you,’ but I said, ‘I don’t want it. I told him that I was quitting”.
Nakamura has since left the entertainment industry and now runs a business.
Those are the four new public allegations that I’ve seen against Kitagawa that emerged since the release of the documentary.
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There were also three other victims who had come forward long before that.
Back in 1988, former Four Leaves member Kita Koji wrote a book that details being raped and coerced into a long-term relationship with Johnny
In 1988, former Four Leaves singer Kita Koji published a 12-volume diary (entitled Dear Hikaru Genji) that took the form of an open letter to the most popular Johnnys act of the time, a roller-skating boy band. In it, he alleged to have been raped and coerced into a long-term sexual relationship with Kitagawa. The boy band boss was said to operate a system of patronage, promoting the careers of idols in return for sexual favours.
A lesser known account was written by Nakatani Ryo (Johnny’s) in 1989, who talked about the sexual abuse he endured and the impact it had on his life.
He wanted to write about the greed and sex that happened behind the scenes and the rage he felt towards Johnny himself.
The draw of this book is basically the claims of Kitagawa’s questionable behavior towards young boys. Nakatani claimed that they all went through a ceremony, and once, an 11yr old boy within the baseball team was also the target of molestation from Johnny.
Johnny was the coach of the baseball team and the four of them would often go to his house after school. There, he would prepare snacks from America, toys, and audio equipment for them to play with as they pleased. And once, Nakatani went to play at Johnny’s house by himself, and that’s when he was met with Johnny’s true intention. “If you do this, it feels good.” Johnny would say as he stroke Nakatani to ejaculation.
The other three members also met with similar treatment but they didn’t feel that they were victims during the time. At first, they’d joke that Johnny is “just another strange old man.” And Nakatani even said himself that he didn’t know how important sexual behaviors were, so he didn’t really feel violated.
“When I got older, I realized how different my experience was from other people’s. That came as a huge shock to me.”
And Nakatani later fell to drugs to deal with such trauma. With the number of ex-Johnny’s that have drug problems, how can people not see that there was something wrong with this agency?”
In 1996, Hiramoto Junya (Johnny’s Jr.) wrote an expose about life at Johnny’s and Kitagawa’s sexual abuse.
In 1996, the rumours returned when Hiramoto Junya, a former member of Johnny’s Juniors, published All About Johnnys, which collated the experiences of other former idols. In his book, Junya says that the Johnnys acts all lived in a communal apartment rented for them in the centre of Tokyo. He claims that Kitagawa shared their living space, insisted on washing their backs at bath time, and slept among them in a large dormitory.
He himself was also a victim.
It took him a while to realize that Kitagawa’s nightly visits to the boys’ rooms had a purpose, Hiramoto recalled. Kitagawa also touched and fondled him countless times, though he managed to escape being raped, he said.
“He would ask me to sit on his lap at the agency’s lesson space and his hand would go there,” Hiramoto said, demonstrating how Kitagawa would softly move his hand from his thigh to his groin.
I assume my commentary on this is unnecessary as it would just state the obvious, but needless to say none of what’s being revealed is remotely new, which makes it worse.
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All of that basically leads up to one of the latest stories, which is that the sexual abuse at Johnny & Associates doesn’t appear to have been limited to Kitagawa himself. A former manager at the company has confessed to Shukan Bunshun that he participated in sexual abuse of at least six trainees while with the company.
Shukan Bunshun explained that whenever they interviewed former Juniors members and office staff, they asked for the name of the staff who were in charge of them at the time. A name that kept coming up is Mr. X, with one junior saying he was like Kitagawa, “Mr. X is like Johnny and was messing around with the Junior members. It seems that he was also handing out money like Johnny did.“
Shukan Bunshun then contacted Mr. X, and for whatever reason, he agreed to be interviewed and basically ended up telling all. While he has since left J&A, he was in charge of the Juniors until about 2000, and recalls sexually abusing Juniors he looked after.
Mr. X’s desires turned to teenage boys when he was put in charge of the Juniors.
He said, “Every day was crazy busy, and I saw them as a familiar group of people because I was working with them side-by-side since before their debut, so even though they we’re of different age, I sometimes felt like we were together. So when we were chatting amicably, I said, ‘Let’s have sex.’ It was really my fault.”
From then on, the hurdles were lowered, and Mr. X had no hesitation in inviting the teenage Juniors to have oral sex with him.
He said, “I was like, ‘That’s good, that’s good,’ and I did that with about six of them. Some of them even went to Tokyo Disneyland with me.”
Surprisingly, Mr. X was was able to make decisions about the work Juniors got, which was previously believed to have been exclusively up to Johnny.
Of course, there were times when they refused, saying, “No no, I don’t want to do that.” However, Mr. X was their manager, and he was entrusted by Johnny with a certain amount of control over the work of the Juniors. It could be said that he took advantage of his position to perpetrate sexual assault.
Shukan Bunshun also claim that Mr. X and other staff were involved in sending juniors to Johnny’s hotel, that Mr. X was close to current J&A President Julie Fujishima, and that Julie knew juniors stayed at Johnny’s house.
When J&A was asked about Mr. X’s admission, they basically claimed they had no knowledge of this happening, only that he worked for the company.
“We are aware of the fact that Mr. X (his real name in the original text) was a member of the company in the past, but we are not aware of any behavior of that kind.”
Shukan Bunshun notes that it was unusual that the company has remained silent towards them yet responded to this inquiry, and that they were using the same language of denying any knowledge as Julie’s statement did.
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I think reasonable people had already assumed that knowledge of the Johnny’s sexual abuse was widespread in the company and people just turned a blind eye to it because of his power. Hell, the media and most everybody else in the industry seemed to as well. But the concern here is that employees of the company may have not only actively facilitated his abuse, but also participated themselves.
Of course, this is only one former manager’s confession, but the fact that he is so nonchalant about literally incriminating himself as a child rapist has to make you wonder how casual people within the company were about this for decades. Quite frankly, I hope that’s not the case for obvious reasons, but it’s a disturbing thought as this story continues to unfold.
