In 2023, it was revealed that Johnny Kitagawa (1931–2019), the founder of the Japanese talent agency Johnny & Associates, had committed repeated acts of sexual abuse from the 1950s until the mid-2010s. Considered one of the most powerful figures in the Japanese entertainment industry, Kitagawa held a virtual monopoly on the creation of boy bands in Japan for more than forty years. No criminal charges were ever filed against Kitagawa during his lifetime, as the Japanese media had covered up the abuse without reporting it at all. He is widely considered the Japanese equivalent of Jimmy Savile due to the unprecedented scale of his abuse, its institutional cover-up, and the posthumous nature of his exposure.
Between 1988 and 2000, Kitagawa was the subject of numerous allegations that he had taken advantage of his position to engage in improper sexual relationships with adolescent boys under contract to Johnny & Associates. Kitagawa denied these claims, and in 2002 was awarded an judgment against Shukan Bunshun, the magazine that had published some of the allegations. An appeal by the magazine followed, resulting in a partial reversal of the judgment. The Tokyo High Court reduced the damages to , concluding that reports of underage drinking and smoking facilitated by Kitagawa were defamatory, but that the allegations of sexual exploitation by Kitagawa were true. A 2004 appeal to the Supreme Court by Kitagawa was rejected. The case saw minimal coverage in Japan, with many journalists attributing it to Kitagawa's influence over the country's media.
In 2023, four years after his death, the allegations became more publicly known after a report in August of that year concluded that Kitagawa committed sexual abuse from the early 1970s until the mid-2010s, including the rape of hundreds of boys who were under contract to Johnny & Associates. The report came after abuse claims against Kitagawa had received renewed attention following the release of the documentary Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop and further allegations made by musician and former Johnny's Jr. member Kauan Okamoto earlier in the year. A reported number of 478 persons have claimed to have been victimized by Kitagawa, of those, 325 sought compensation, and only 150 have been confirmed to have signed to Johnny & Associates. Later that year, it was revealed that the agency would be renamed to SMILE UP, and that anything bearing the name "Johnny", such as related companies and performing groups, would undergo changes to remove any trace of Kitagawa's name. A follow-up program by the BBC aired in 2024, called Our World: The Shadow of a Predator, continued with a further look at the case that got almost 1000 claims made.
Allegations during Kitagawa's lifetime Initial claims In 1988, , a former member of Four Leaves, published a series of diaries under the title . Kita wrote that Johnny Kitagawa had used his position of influence over the group to make unwanted sexual advances towards the boys under contract to him., , Publisher: , December 1988 In 1989, former Johnnys member Ryo Nakatani published similar allegations in his book Johnny's Revenge and stated that he was sexually abused by Kitagawa when he was 11 years old. Similar allegations were made in a book published in 1996 by Junya Hiramoto, a former member of Johnny's Jr. Hiramoto alleged Kitagawa shared the same dormitory as his talents and that he had seen him force a boy to have sex with him.
In 1999, the weekly magazine Shūkan Bunshun printed a ten-part series that detailed numerous allegations of sexual improprieties. The accusers were a dozen teenage boys who had been recruited into the Johnny & Associates organization, who spoke on condition of anonymity. In addition, the series accused Kitagawa of permitting minors in his employ to drink alcohol and smoke.
Lawsuit Yoshihide Sakaue, a member of the House of Representatives, held a hearing on the matter in April 2000. Sakaue said that as a result of the media coverage, and in response to a request from a constituent, he wanted to examine whether government officials had properly investigated complaints about Kitagawa. Officials of the National Police Agency acknowledged that they had investigated Kitagawa's agency, but had not determined that sexual harassment had occurred. Officials indicated that Kitagawa's company was warned about permitting minors to use alcohol and smoke cigarettes.
The National Police and Welfare Ministry indicated that under the Ministry's understanding of the law, even if the allegations against Kitagawa were true, the acts could not be considered child abuse because Kitagawa was neither parent nor guardian to the boys in his employ. Officials testified that neither the boys nor their parents had pursued a criminal complaint against Kitagawa. Kitagawa denied any wrongdoing, and his attorney characterized the claims as being from disgruntled former employees voicing discontent. Kitagawa sued Shūkan Bunshun for libel.
After protracted litigation, in 2002 the Tokyo District Court awarded Kitagawa an judgment against Shūkan Bunshun, finding that the articles defamed him. Shūkan Bunshun appealed the ruling. In a partial reversal of the district court, the Tokyo High Court in 2003 ruled that the Shūkan Bunshun series did in fact defame Kitagawa. However, it ruled that the defamatory content of the articles was limited to the allegations that Kitagawa had provided minors with alcohol and tobacco products. The court found that the Shūkan Bunshun had sufficient reason to accept as trustworthy, and publish, the sexual allegations by Kitagawa's former clients. Kitagawa appealed this decision to the Supreme Court. In 2004, the court rejected his appeal.
Other than Shūkan Bunshun, none of the major Japanese media covered the story of the allegations against Kitagawa, the hearing in Parliament, or the Kitagawa lawsuit. The New York Times attributed this lack of coverage to Kitagawa's influence over the popular media. Once Shūkan Bunshun began publication of the series, Johnny & Associates denied the magazine and the other media owned by its parent organization, access to any of its performers. In 2023, The Asahi Shimbun speculated that the Japanese media also initially did not take the news seriously because men were not seen as sexual assault victims at the time and thus the news was seen as "gossip"; and because Shūkan Bunshun had lost the initial lawsuit. In addition, each media company had a dedicated person who would act as a "representative" of Johnny & Associates, where they would act as an in-between between both companies; those representatives were often fans of talents from Johnny & Associates.
Subsequent allegations and 2023 scandal
Following the lawsuit, in 2005, Shogo Kiyama, a former Johnny's Jr. member, published a book criticizing how broadcasters never reported Kitagawa's case and he was never punished in spite of the allegations. , a Japanese record producer, who had mentioned Kitagawa's sexual harassment allegations in various media, had his management contract terminated in the middle of the period by , to which he had belonged. He stated that Mariya Takeuchi and her husband Tatsuro Yamashita, who also belong to the company, agreed with the company's policy.
Shortly after Kitagawa's death in July 2019, Shūkan Bunshun posted another sexual assault allegation from a former Johnny's Jr. member, who alleged that his first kiss was with Kitagawa, and that because he resisted his advances, he was relegated to the corner of the stage during performances. In January 2021, Koki Maeda, a former member of 7 Men Samurai, stated through an interview with Arama! Japan that he was "certain" there were sexual relations between Kitagawa and Johnny's Jr. because he "had the privilege of deciding who deserved to debut". Moments after the interview was published, Maeda recanted his statement.
In March 2023, the BBC released a documentary centered on the sexual abuse claims against Kitagawa, Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop, presented by Mobeen Azhar, who investigated why public opinion of him was still favourable at the time. Azhar started researching the topic in 2019 following Kitagawa's death. Throughout production of this documentary, Azhar and Inman stated that, with the exception of Shūkan Bunshun, Japanese media and industry professionals generally declined to talk to them, and they were advised multiple times not to create the documentary. In response to the documentary, Johnny & Associates stated that they were creating "transparent organizational structures" that would be announced later in the year.
In April 2023, musician and former Johnny's Jr. member Kauan Okamoto told a press conference held at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan that he had been subjected to sexual abuse by Kitagawa on a number of occasions between 2012 and 2016, and called on the management to acknowledge the misconduct. Okamoto estimated that between 100 and 200 boys were invited to Kitagawa's home during his time at Johnny's, and claimed that when Kitagawa told one of his guests to go to bed early, everyone knew "it was your turn". In response to Okamoto's press conference, Johnny & Associates released a statement saying that it would "continue its unified effort to thoroughly ensure compliance without exception, and tackle strengthening of a system of governance," but the company did not directly address the allegations at the time. Later that month, NHK reported that Johnny & Associates was interviewing their employees and talents, and had sent a document out to business partners saying that they were looking into the allegations. The document said that the company took the allegations seriously and that their investigations so far had uncovered no cases of misconduct, adding that they were aware that such in-house interviews were not enough to uncover the truth. After the press conference, NHK reported on the abuse on April 13. This was the first television report on the scandal by NHK. It was broadcast for two minutes at 4 pm.
On May 14, 2023, Julie Keiko Fujishima, Kitagawa's niece and president of Johnny & Associates, issued an apology to those who had alleged sexual abuse by Kitagawa. She added that she was committed to implementing measures addressing the victims' needs. Two days after Johnny & Associates released their statement, Okamoto and the former Johnny's Jr. Yasushi Hashida attended a parliamentary meeting at the National Diet organized by the Constitutional Democratic Party. Hashida said that he was sexually abused around twice by Kitagawa when he was 13 years old. Both Hashida and Okamoto credited coverage of the sexual abuse allegations by the foreign press as being key to paving the way for its coverage in the domestic press.
In July 2023, the United Nations Human Rights Council investigated Kitagawa's abuse at the agency. An independent probe established by Johnny & Associates reported the findings of their investigation on August 29, 2023, saying that Kitagawa repeatedly committed sexual abuse from the early 1970s until the mid-2010s. They recommended that Fujishima resign from her post as company president, and that the company must accept the claims of abuse and make amends for them. On September 7, 2023, Johnny & Associates held their first official press conference, where they formally acknowledged Kitagawa's abuse for the first time. Fujishima resigned, and former Shonentai's member Noriyuki Higashiyama took over as CEO. However, Higashiyama is also alleged to have told a Johnny's Jr. member to "eat my sausage" in the past.
Ryoichi Hattori's son Yoshitsugu and his friend Motoyasu Matsuzaki said that Kitagawa sexually abused them as children in the 1950s.