An investigation by the U.N. Human Rights Council has concluded that the late Johnny Kitagawa, for many years essentially the most highly effective man in Japanese present enterprise, abused tons of of boys, and that the company he based has nonetheless not taken duty for the crimes.
Pichamon Yeophantong, a member of the U.N. working group which visited Japan, additionally criticized the inaction of the federal government and stated it wanted to behave as “the first responsibility bearer to make sure clear investigations of perpetrators and that victims acquire efficient treatments.”
The working group “noticed deeply troubling points” throughout the Japanese media and leisure business, based on Pichamon, who stated that the absence of codes and guidelines round office habits contributed to a tradition of “impunity for sexual violence and harassment.”
Born John Hiromu Kitagawa in Los Angeles to a Buddhist priest in 1931, Kitagawa went backwards and forwards between L.A. and Tokyo in his youth and started working on the U.S. embassy in Japan within the Nineteen Fifties. Whereas there, he recruited a gaggle of youngsters to hitch a boyband he would handle and christen Johnnys, the title given to the multitude of teams he would go on to create. In 1962, he based Johnny & Associates Inc. It was instrumental in creating the ‘idol’ group phenomenon, spawned megastar teams corresponding to SMAP and Arashi, and solely dealt with male expertise.
An article this month within the weekly journal Shukan Bunshun quotes a former workers member who labored for a few years with Kitagawa on the company, saying, “Greater than a case of the president of an idol empire being a sexual abuser, this was a sexual abuser who created an idol empire to groom boys on the best way to creating their [showbiz] debut.”
Although the current highlight shone on Kitagawa’s crimes adopted a BBC documentary aired in March Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop, his habits was an open secret in Japan that was reported on by weekly magazines and coated up by the main media teams.
Certainly, the primary allegations had been printed in a March 1965 subject of the now defunct Shukan Sankei, when Kitagawa was nonetheless working on the U.S. embassy, with Shukan Gendai carrying a report from one other sufferer in April 1981. Quite a few books written by former expertise from Johnnys had been revealed within the Nineties contained accounts of abuse each skilled and witnessed.
In 1999, Shukan Bunshun ran a 10-part sequence detailing graphic accounts of rape by Kitagawa from a dozen victims. Kitagawa sued the writer for libel and received damages within the Tokyo District Court docket in 2002. His victory was reported by all the main newspapers. That call was partially overturned and the damages had been drastically diminished the next 12 months by the Tokyo Excessive Court docket, which concluded the abuse allegations had been largely true. Solely two newspapers, the liberal-leaning Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun, carried the brand new ruling, and in smaller articles than they’d run on Kitagawa’s earlier victory.
All of Japan’s largest newspapers belong to media teams that embrace tv and radio networks. Kitagawa was ruthlessly efficient in controlling the narrative round himself and his stars. It was well-known that something approaching unfavorable protection of anyone hooked up to his company may lead to a complete media group shedding entry to its large secure of expertise.
When Kitagawa died in 2019, then deputy chief cupboard secretary Kotaro Nogami paid tribute to the mogul, saying that he had “educated many idols over a few years and left behind large achievements within the Japanese leisure business. I want to provide my honest prayers for him.”
For the reason that airing of the BBC documentary and subsequent Japanese media protection, dozens extra victims have come ahead, lastly placing names and faces to what had beforehand been largely nameless accounts in weekly magazines.
In Could, Takeshi Kitano, arguably Japan’s most recognizable entertainer, weighed in on the Kitagawa sexual abuse scandal. Talking on the Cannes Movie Competition, Kitano instructed LeslyNewsMagazine that “the time of having the ability to communicate up about LGBTQ stuff and sexual harassment has lastly come to Japan.” He added, that “these tales have all the time been round [in our industry].”
Nonetheless, there seems a reluctance to completely settle for the enormity of the crimes and the way the complicity of the media and leisure companies helped facilitate pedophilia.
Shortly after the documentary aired, U.S.-born Japanese TV expertise Dave Spector tweeted (in Japanese) that he was “Stunned on the distinction in tone between the reporter’s insistent Western-style “sense of justice” and sufferer mentality considering and that of the folks concerned within the precise case,” occurring to query why they didn’t report about it whereas Kitagawa was alive in the event that they cared a lot.
One other common on Japanese TV went additional. Dewi Sukarno criticized the U.N. group’s go to to Japan on Twitter final month, and stated that Kitagawa “beloved the kids from his company as in the event that they had been his personal,” including that the criticism of him was “bringing shame to Japan.”