The Japanese boy band guru abused hundreds of boys. Four Roman swords discovered in Dead Sea cave

It’s probably the most shocking abuse scandal in the Japanese billionaire’s entertainment industry: After years of cover-ups, powerful boy band forge Johnny & Associates has admitted for the first time to the massive sexual abuse of young talents by founder Johnny Kitagawa, who died in 2019 at age 87 age.

Kitagawa was one of the most powerful figures in the Japanese entertainment industry, turning many boy bands such as SMAP and Arashi into stars. For decades he allegedly sexually assaulted hundreds of teenagers who wanted to become pop singers. But his machinations were always kept hidden.

The president of the talent agency, Julie Keiko Fujishima, admitted her uncle’s sexual misconduct to the press on Thursday and resigned. A team of experts working on the abuse case had previously concluded that the company was hiding Kitagawa’s pedophile activities, which had been going on since the 1970s. Suspicions of complicity and cover-ups exist within the advertising and entertainment industry.

Critics also accuse Japan’s state media of largely ignoring previous allegations against Kitagawa, given Kitagawa’s powerful influence, and of making themselves complicit in not investigating the scandal much sooner. It was only after the BBC aired a documentary in March that interviewed several people who claimed he had been abusive that the issue gained more attention.

Several former members of the agency subsequently publicly described how they had been abused by Kitagawa as teenagers. Some of the victims are said to be as young as 12 years old. Anyone who spoke up internally would have been told, “If you want to make it big, you have to accept it”. (sda/dpa)