The Japanese music industry was rocked on Friday by the publication of a scoop by the tabloid Weekly Post alleging that singer and producer Mitsuhiro Hidaka has received nighttime visits from an underage idol to his home.
The 39-year-old Hidaka is a rapper, actor, dancer, and member of the J-pop group AAA, and also works as a solo artist under the name Sky-Hi. He is also president of the entertainment production company BMSG, which represents many famous idols.
Weekly Post has learned that Hidaka repeatedly "summoned" an underage idol to his home late at night.
Sadly, it should come as a ...
One of the biggest media stories in the autumn was the salacious scoop about the female mayor of Maebashi, a small city just outside Tokyo, and her love hotel trysts with an older male staffer.
After admitting the meetings and in the inappropriateness of them, but continuing to denying she was having an affair with the married man, 42-year-old Akira Ogawa eventually resigned as mayor in late November.
Most voters interviewed by the media found Ogawa's explanations unconvincing and it was clear that her position was untenable. The city set up a special hot line and received over 12,000 phone ...
Last week, it was revealed that attractive 21-year-old female golfer Reika Miyako was dating a man 30 years her senior.
That nugget of info was enough to merit a flood of articles in the tabloids, but more details have since emerged about the 51-year-old lucky gent who is her boyfriend. It's none other than her married coach, Shinobu Ishii.
She has since apologized on December 1 with a handwritten letter posted on social media that confirmed that she was breaking up with Ishii and ending their professional relationship.
"I have been dating my coach, Shinobu Ishii, since last year. ...
Saika Kawakita is one of the biggest porn stars in Japan and a probably familiar face to most readers of this blog. She has gained global fame more recently because a GIF from one of her porn productions inexplicably became a meme on social media in December 2024.
According to a scoop by the tabloid Weekly Bunshun published this week, the 26-year-old Kawakita is having an affair with volleyball player Ran Takahashi.
The 24-year-old Takahashi currently plays for the Suntory Sunbirds in Osaka, and has played on the Japanese national team.
He is supposed to be in a relationship with the ...
Maebashi is a small city in Gunma, a short distance north from Tokyo and rarely in the news. That all changed this week, however, with the intense media response to reports that the female mayor has been allegedly conducting an affair with a male staffer.
Society seems to respond more strongly to adultery claims when it involves a woman. A male politician having an affair would result in nary an eyebrow raised (opposition party leader Yuichiro Tamaki quickly recovered from his scandal), but it's a very different situation for women in her early forties.
It should be noted from the start, ...
Now this is what we call moving on!
After quitting as an announcer at Fuji TV last summer, the future looked uncertain for Nagisa Watanabe.
When the Masahiro Nakai scandal broke, people were quick to deduce that she was probably the unnamed woman at the center of it. Though she's still not officially identified, it is generally assumed that she was the victim of the alleged sexual assault, which led to her taking a leave of absence from her job.
Nakai, one of the biggest names in Japanese entertainment, was forced to retire and Fuji TV suffered a mass exodus of advertisers.
The ...
The Japan Ladies Professional Golf Association has banned 30-year-old male caddy Ryo Kurinaga from the tour for nine years. The ban follows Bunshun reports published in March that the married Kurinaga had affairs with three separate pro players (24-year-old Miyu Abe, 22-year-old Haruka Kawasaki, and 21-year-old Yumeka Kobayashi).
It is unclear if Kurinaga carried out his philandering with the women at the same time and how long each affair continued. His ban extends to attending any JLPGA event too.
You might think that this was a private matter and unrelated to the sport. Nonetheless, ...
Nagisa Watanabe is to release her first photo book, published in Japan on June 25.
Though still officially unnamed, it is very widely assumed that the former TV announcer is the woman at the center of the Masahiro Nakai sex scandal, which has ended his career and brought one of Japan's biggest broadcasters into disrepute.
It came to light late last year that Nakai, formerly of SMAP, had paid a female announcer a huge sum of money as compensation for a sexual assault. This is a common way in Japan to avoid someone pressing criminal charges.
The scandal has grown, with allegations of ...
When April Fool's Day pranks go wrong.
Yesterday, we posted about the successful April Fool's Day stunt by gravure model Jun Amaki, who teased us that she was retiring. Of course, she wasn't and it was just a prank to get attention, and she even managed to attract news articles and raise her profile.
Influencer Sarimaru Kunikida's prank, though, attracted a very different kind of reaction.
The mom of one who works in PR and recruitment posted on April Fool's Day not about herself but about a guy from her company called Yuji Mizoguchi, a well-known entrepreneur and wrestler (and former ...
Yui Imaizumi has announced that she is returning to the entertainment industry.
At the height of her fame and popularity in early 2021, the former Keyakizaka46 cutie announced she was pregnant and married to YouTuber Mahoto Watanabe. She was just 22 and he several years older.
But then the problems started, with revelations the Watanabe had been grooming a 15-year-old and that he was arrested in 2019 for allegedly beating up a previous girlfriend.
In March 2021, Watanabe was arrested on suspicion of violating the child prostitution and pornography law (because he had asked the ...
