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on-air support, but more revelations are still trickling out in further articles, and 60-year-old Matsumoto has now withdrawn from his television commitments, nominally so he can pursue a ...
A retiring actress has complained that the mainstream media is ignoring the open secret that is the casting couch in the entertainment industry.
Though the sexual abuse that took place at Johnny's has now received the media attention it deserves after decades of silence, Misa Hayashi (林美佐) has said that there are still major issues of abuse in the industry.
In an interview with Daily Shincho, Hayashi relates how she was told to sleep with people when her DVD sales were poor. This was when she was working as a gravure idol in her twenties.
As we have noted in the past, the casting ...
Regular readers might remember Ayana Kobayashi, whose stunning gravure shoot we wrote about in 2019. It was notable because she did an alluring nude shoot with her butt and nipples on display despite being married (to a comedian).
She has since released a couple of DVDs.
It's perhaps because she's a bit of an outsider -- someone who came to mainstream gravure a bit late and already married with a child -- that she's freer to say certain things.
Now in her early thirties, Kobayashi recently made headlines with a blog entry in which she described her own experience with sexual ...
Well, isn't this just the pot calling the kettle black?
A prominent lawyer known for his work to stamp out sexual harassment is himself now being sued by an actress he represented for, you've guessed it, sexual harassment.
The complainant is a 25-year-old woman who goes by the name Chino. The stage actor wants the 47-year-old Izutaro Managi disbarred and is seeking ¥11 million in damages.
Managi has spoken in the National Diet on the issue of harassment and frequently appears in the media to discuss the problem in the theater and movie business.
In 2018, Chino set up a support ...
Newbie Japanese porn star Momona Koibuchi (恋渕ももな) made her debut in April last year and is currently affiliated with SOD Star. In a recent two-part interview with Bunshun, the busty performer describes her entry into the industry.
After graduating high school, the 23-year-old worked as a civil servant dealing with tax and social health insurance.
But her experience of regular sexual harassment at work during this time led, she claims, her to pivot into a whole different career in adult video. Her male colleagues would ask her about her bra size on a daily basis, or forcibly kissed ...
The mayor of Nagoya, Takashi Kawamura, has been accused of making an inappropriate hand gesture when posing for a photo with young music idols.
The head of Japan's fourth largest city, and a major industrial center, the 74-year-old mayor stood for a jocular pic with several attendees at a Korean cultural festival in Nagoya held on November 12 and 13.
However, it was immediately noticed that he did the fig sign with his right hand. The image of the smiling Kawamura, surrounded by women decades younger (dressed in traditional Korean clothing), with his thumb between two fingers has caused a ...
In the age of #MeToo, the job of the intimacy coordinator in film and television has risen to prominence in the West.
What about Japan? With the recent scandals over the likes of directors Sion Sono and Hideo Sakaki, documentary filmmaker Yu Kaneko, and actor Houka Kinoshita, concern over sexual predators and harassment is higher than ever (albeit much more belated than in the United States and Europe).
Intimacy coordinators do exist, though are a rare species indeed. Gendai Media recently published a two-part interview with Momoko Nishiyama, one of only two professional intimacy ...
Here's a peculiar case.
As reported in Bengo4, a woman is suing her employer in Japan for enabling sexual harassment.
Her company failed to act after it was alleged the woman's section chief sent her around 150 pornographic images. They were sent to her at the company address over three occasions between January and April 2020, with the third batch alone containing 100 photos and an adult toy. The woman in her thirties is seeking ¥4.4 million in damages in the lawsuit that began at Tokyo District Court on March 30.
The man in his fifties sent them to her by private post anonymously. She ...
The fashion model and celebrity Marie has stirred up the perennial issue of the casting couch in the Japanese entertainment world.
The 33-year-old, who is half French Canadian and half Japanese, has claimed that she was propositioned when she was 18 by the now-retired comedian Shinsuke Shimada. The encounter is being described as "makura eigyo" (literally, pillow business), the Japanese word for the casting couch. Shimada was then at the height of his fame and the implication no doubt was that sleeping with him would further her own career.
Marie made the allegation on April 4 and then ...
A Japanese newswire article about sexual harassment among aspiring models and idols is doing the rounds, confirming what we've been saying for years.
Apparently, a government survey has shown that 26.9% of Japanese young female models and starlets have received "unwanted requests for sexually oriented photo shoots".
This comes hot on the heels of last year's controversy about widespread coercion in the porn industry.
In the first survey by the Cabinet Office on sexual abuse against young women, 7.7% of respondents had been offered contracts to become models or starlets.
Asked about ...
