AKB48 member Mei Hanada sacked for relationship with fan
Mei Hanada has been sacked by AKB48 for having a personal relationship with a fan, it was announced by the music group’s management today.
Hanada has been on leave since May, having suffered mental health issues from the end of last year, which had caused her to be repeatedly late.
Management somehow found out about her meetings with a certain fan while on leave, which Hanada claimed were just chance encounters that happened twice, but management investigated further and determined had actually happened on multiple occasions.
She apparently wanted to return to AKB48 and management claim that they attempted to negotiate for this to be possible, but two main sticking points made her termination inevitable: she wanted the ban on the fan in question lifted and she wanted other members who had been gossiping about her to be punished. According to the management, Hanada (or Meimei) also only wanted to communicate through a lawyer.
The 21-year-old, who joined AKB48 as a trainee in March 2024 and became a full member in December 2025, has since released her own nine-minute apology video on X today in which she appears with a shaved head and face mask. She acknowledged the private relationship with a fan and also claims that she was told her to shave her head, which the management have denied.
It’s a scandal that has shocked fans and brought back echoes of the notorious Minami Minegishi incident in 2013, in which the idol shaved her head in penance for a romantic transgression. It will once again reopen the debate about how much control management agencies have over idols’ personal lives.
This is also apparently (and surprisingly) the first time that AKB48 has directly sacked an idol. Though various members have been punished for dating and sexual relationships in the past, the management stopped short of actually terminating a contract and instead exiled members to sister groups and so on, and quietly had them graduate early. Some such “damaged” idols later became major stars, including Minegishi and, perhaps most famously, Rino Sashihara, whose own early scandal is almost forgotten now.
3 Comments
The Minegishi Minami style of apologizing is outdated and unnecessary. There’s no need for her to take the scandal too seriously.
And if she wants to continue in show business, she can start a career as an actress, solo singer, talent or announcer.
The ‘purity for the fans’ angle is such BS. It’s because those cretinous old producers want to be the only ones fucking the idols, which we all know they do.
This chick is just looking for notoriety by copying the Minegishi stunt, there’s no way that the groups management told her to do it.