TOKYO, March 29 — Japan’s greatest and most profitable boyband agency has admitted that two more employees carried out sexual abuse, months after it mentioned its late founder had abused younger aspiring stars.
The two employees of Johnny & Associates had been “firmly handled” final yr, the corporate, which has modified its title to Smile-Up, mentioned Thursday.
Disgraced music mogul Johnny Kitagawa died in 2019 aged 87, after engineering the delivery of J-pop mega-groups and amassing adoring followers throughout Asia.
But his legacy was posthumously tarnished final yr by cascading revelations about his decades-long sexual abuse of younger boys in search of stardom beneath his tutelage.
In August, a report revealed by a taskforce investigating Kitagawa’s crimes mentioned that along with him, “different workers on the agency had been confirmed to have perpetrated intercourse abuse”, offering no particulars of the variety of employees concerned.
But on Thursday, Smile-Up clarified that there had been two extra offenders, following an interview agency head Noriyuki Higashiyama gave to the BBC, whose documentary on Kitagawa’s predatory historical past final yr prompted soul-searching.
Up till now, “we’ve shunned elaborating on their instances to guard the privateness of these concerned, and forestall defamation in opposition to them,” Smile-Up mentioned in a press release.
“None of those that have reported to us sexual abuse (by Kitagawa) have made detailed complaints in opposition to” the two, it added.
“But ought to complaints come up in future, we’ll examine them and sincerely redress the survivors.” — eNM
