This story broke at the end of last year and we sat on it for a few days to see if there were any further developments.
A minor scandal has emerged involving top Nogizaka46 member Yuki Yoda, after the tabloid magazine Weekly Bunshun caught her going to a luxury gym in Ebisu, Tokyo, in which she was allegedly in a room alone with a male trainer for several hours.
The 22-year-old, who joined the idol group in 2016 but came firmly onto our radar when she released her hit photo book in 2020, apparently attends the gym twice a week and has the same male trainer for her sessions.
As noted in its ...
Sumire Yokono suddenly left NMB48 in May 2021 -- shortly after a report broke that went to a hotel with a male celebrity twice her age. Even more shockingly, she was also spotted on a date (six days later) with yet another boyband member, with whom she also spent the night at an expensive hotel.
The resulting scandal sunk her NMB future.
After a year off, the 21-year-old relaunched her career in May this year.
Su-chan is now trying to go it on her own (with a little help from a major modeling agency). She is carving out a career as a gradol and model, and is succeeding: three gravure cover ...
It's not just top businessmen and politicians who frequent the pricey hostess bars of Ginza and elsewhere. Male celebrities also have expensive tastes, including spending time with the attractive younger ladies who (as long as you keep buying them over-priced drinks) will pretend to find your conversation interesting and hint that they might be willing to sleep with you.
However, large consumption of alcohol and the sense of privilege that comes from paying for a woman's time can lead to trouble.
One of Japan's most famous and popular actors, Teruyuki Kagawa, was forced to apologize on ...
Sometimes, things do have a happy ending.
When AKB48's Minami Minegishi shaved her head back in 2013 to apologize for a sex scandal, it prompted immense controversy over the control that management has over idols' private/person lives, and sparked headlines around the world. Her tearful video, head shaven like a nun, was painful to watch (though images of Miichan seeming to pose happily for photos with her peers either just before or after suggested to some that the video was purely performative).
As a 20-year-old, she had to undergo a traumatic and humiliating experience in public just for ...
Papakatsu, the buzzword that refers to compensated dating for sugar daddies, is in the news again.
Takeru Yoshikawa, a politician with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, has been accused of drinking with an 18-year-old girl.
House of Representatives member Yoshikawa, who is 40 but frankly looks a but older (perhaps it's the jowls), has a wife and two daughters. He was photographed arriving with the girl at a high-end hotel in the Odaiba bay district of Tokyo in late May.
According to the scoop in News Post Seven (that includes 46 pictures!), he and the girl arrived, checked in, and then ...
The graduation of various leading members and the restrictions placed on live, in-person events by the pandemic have greatly reduced the presence of AKB48 and its sister groups in popular culture. The groups retain strong followings, of course, but the days when AKB dominated advertising and TV shows seem over.
As such, even the little scandals seem to pass us by. We missed that Yuka Suzuki (鈴木優香) was forced to graduate AKB48 last September due to an alleged romance (oh, the horror!) that first emerged in spring 2021.
Following her ignominious departure from AKB48, Yuka Suzuki ...
Can you imagine the surprise if a 40-year-old female model were dating a 20-year-old male idol? But the other way round, it's just another day in the urban jungle. Especially if you're a celebrity.
Weekly tabloid Shukan Bunshun has scored a minor scoop with an article claiming that singer You (or Yu) Yokoyama of Kanjani Eight is sleeping with Sumire Yokono of NMB48.
Yokoyama, who is 39, was in Kyoto to perform in a play in early March. After the show was over one day, he returned to his hotel -- where he was soon apparently joined by a young woman.
This lady is, Shukan Bunshun reckons, ...
The casting couch is one of the open secrets of the idol industry. Another one is the extra money that idols (music, gravure, AV), seiyu, models, and actors earn from compensated dating.
This gets exposed at regular intervals by tabloid scoops. One such scandal caused Shoko Takahashi to lose her agency as a gradol (when she worked as Shoko Takasaki) and launched her porn career.
The JAV star Yuria Satomi had trouble with the tax agency in 2016 over huge amounts of undeclared income from her "boyfriends," who compensated her financially for their relationship.
The latest scandal was broken ...
Spare a thought for Yui Imaizumi.
The former Keyakizaka46 cutie seemed to have found love and happiness with a man, albeit one who does not use condoms and presumes there are no consequences to ejaculating inside her.
After a tough time last year when she contracted the coronavirus, but also showed us how busty she is on Zoom, Imaizumi recently announced her marriage to 28-year-old YouTuber Mahoto Watanabe.
The 22-year-old, who left Keyakizaka46 in 2018, also announced that she was pregnant, so in other words -- this is yet another celebrity shotgun wedding.
A moment for fans to ...
A quite extraordinary scandal appeared in the Japanese media in the last few days. The model and celebrity Loveli (real name, Izumi Shirahama) is facing prosecution over an allegation of sexual assault on another woman in May 2019.
The Shukan Bunshun has published a sensational interview with the victim, named only as Ms. A.
According to the story, the Filipino-Japanese Loveli allegedly assaulted Ms. A while they were staying in Shirahama in Wakayama. After drinking, her accuser says, Loveli threw herself on the woman in the early hours of the morning, taking off her panties and going down ...
