There has been a lot of outrage recently about male hosts in Japan exploiting vulnerable women, young and old, in order to get them to pay the ridiculous fees their clubs charge. This includes forcing underage girls into prostitution.
We shouldn't overlook the dark and controversial world of music idols, however, where the casting coach is commonplace (as it is in gravure modeling). Things get particularly murky in the far less lucrative world of minor and underground idols, who don't get mainstream exposure and are more vulnerable to managers and so on promising success and money.
A ...
The biggest entertainment world scandal in Japan of late has been the allegations of past sexual assault made against one of the nation's most famous comedians, Hitoshi Matsumoto.
The reports first emerged in a tabloid magazine in late December and have continued to unfold. At first, Matsumoto, his agency (Yoshimoto Kogyo), and broadcasters ignored or gave the report a minimal denial, and colleagues offered on-air support, but more revelations are still trickling out in further articles, and 60-year-old Matsumoto has now withdrawn from his television commitments, nominally so he can pursue a ...
Last week, we reported on the sexual assault that Korean music artist DJ Soda suffered at a music festival in Osaka during a part of her performance on August 13 in which she got close to fans.
Since DJ Soda first went public (initially to her five million followers on Instagram) with her distress over the assault, the case has ignited a furore in Japan and elsewhere.
Netizens in Japan -- who tend to be male, nationalistic, anti-Korean, and not known for their sympathetic attitude toward women -- have accused her of being anti-Japanese because she claimed it was the first such ...
The popular South Korean musician DJ Soda has accused fans in Japan of groping her during a set at a music festival in Osaka on Sunday.
DJ Soda, who is arguably as much a beauty icon as a music one, took to social media to express her shock at what happened.
At the end of her set, the 35-year-old also known as Hwang So-hee ran toward the enthusiastic audience behind a fence to greet and dance with them. At other events, this usually means she waves at fans and dances in front of them for a bit, but fans in Osaka took the proximity as an opportunity to touch DJ Soda.
Notably, they ...
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 ...
Japanese celebrity Dewi Sukarno (pictured) recently made the astonishing assertion on a TV show that "the foremost cause of infertility is abortion."
Though abortion is relatively common in Japan, it still carries a stigma and the social structures are not in place that you might expect, as Sukarno's ignorance demonstrates.
As Nikkei reported this month, rape survivors must get consent from their sexual predator to have an abortion.
One woman who was assaulted by an acquaintance was told by hospital after hospital that they could not proceed with an abortion without consent from the ...
The growing popularity of Halloween in Japan has resulted in massive street cosplay parties, particularly in areas like Shibuya in Tokyo.
That have been adverse effects, too, which is almost inevitable when so many thousands of (mostly young) people come together. Last year, in particular, seemed like a turning point when a truck was turned over in Shibuya by drunken revellers. Some used the street parties as a mere excuse to grope women or take panchira underskirt photos.
This year's Halloween in Shibuya was crazily crowded but a little more subdued, with tighter police controls back again ...
The sexual assault in December 2018 of Maho Yamaguchi shocked fans and the idol industry, exposing the mismanagement and abuse of the performers in Japan.
Yamaguchi was forced to apologise for the incident but, appalled at the treatment she received by her handlers, quit the Niigata idol group NGT48, which is part of the AKB48 network. The actual assault itself then received a very different kind of treatment: inspiring its own parody adult video release earlier this year starring a former NMB48 idol Risako Okada, who now performs porn under the name Miko Matsuda.
You might be forgiven for ...
The latest porn release (HND00655) by former NMB48 idol Miko Matsuda (originally known as Risako Okada) is an apparently shameless parody of the Maho Yamaguchi incident.
As was later widely reported, Yamaguchi was sexually assaulted by two fans in December 2018 after her address was inadvertently given to the stalkers by another member of the group. Exposing the exploitative conditions under which idols labor, the management did not acknowledge what had happened until Yamaguchi herself went public. "Mahohon," as she is popular known, first had to issue an apology for the "trouble" she ...
There are many ways to get a girl's attention.
Just being a gaijin in Japan can be helpful... sometimes -- though sometimes decidedly unhelpful in this regard.
But a select few people rather choose to adopt more unusual means in order to get closer to their target.
That being said, we reckon this guy takes the prize for most brazen.
Back in February, a 26-year-old woman was working as normal at a cosmetics section of a department store in central Tokyo. Now, as anyone who has ever gone to one knows, these sections tend to be on the ground floors of department store and overwhelm ...
