A woman who is seeking justice and support for victims of sexual abuse at talent agency Johnny & Associates Inc. says she has become the target of an online harassment campaign.

Asumi Takada, a pseudonym, said two-thirds of the messages sent to her website have been defamatory.

Takada founded Penlight (Group to reveal sexual assault at Johnny’s & Associates) after former members of the talent agency said they were sexually abused by Johnny Kitagawa, the agency’s founder.

Suspicions that Kitagawa was molesting boys signed by his agency date back decades. He died in 2019 at age 87.

Penlight started an online petition in April to urge the agency to establish a third-party investigative committee, acknowledge the facts, and apologize to and provide support for the victims of sexual assault.

It submitted the petition with more than 16,000 signatures to the agency last month.

The four members of Penlight are fans of the agency’s idols.

Takada said she has been a fan for about a decade and has traveled extensively to attend dozens of concerts.

She said she was torn between her passion for supporting the agency and its idols and her feelings that sexual assault was unacceptable.

But she initiated the petition campaign, hoping that raising her voice would help to reconcile the two feelings.

However, many commenters online have criticized her actions and suggested she has ulterior motives.

“She’s lying about being a fan just to bring down Johnny’s & Associates,” one commenter said.

Another poster said Takada “is inflicting secondary harm (on the victims) while trying to inflate the number of victims.”

Her real name and unmasked photos have also spread online.

Some posters railed against her involvement in a group tackling the issue of “comfort women,” who were forced to provide sex to Japanese military personnel before and during World War II.

Takada said she has always been driven by a deep-seated desire to eradicate sexual assault, and this was one of the reasons she started the petition campaign.

“I wanted to raise my voice in this society as an individual. It is absurd to deny that,” she said.

She also decided to use the pseudonym because of concerns that speaking out on issues related to sexual assault could affect her personal life and those around her.

At the end of May, Takada shared her views on Twitter.

“Some people say I engage in activities while hiding my true identity to increase my influence in the media,” she tweeted. “But all I want is for many people to think about the issues.

“Even if you cannot agree with Penlight, I want more people to think about the issue of Kitagawa’s sexual misconduct,” she said.

The talent agency has set up a panel of external experts named the “special team to prevent a recurrence.” Panel members said they will listen to victims who have come forward, review the agency’s response to the allegations, and suggest measures to prevent a recurrence.

The panel will not, however, make any attempt at uncovering the full extent of the sexual abuse that occurred, its members said.

BROAD FAN BASE

Shinichi Yamaguchi, an associate professor at the Center for Global Communications, International University of Japan who specializes in online defamation issues, said people who speak up about certain issues often face online abuse.

And the issue of the sex abuse allegations against Kitagawa has raged online, given the extensive fan base of Johnny’s idols across the nation, he said.

“The agency has an incredibly large number of fans,” Yamaguchi said. “The broader the fan base, the more people will view (the Penlight campaign) negatively.”

The professor said a certain segment of passionate fans may be unwilling to accept or hear any negative comment about the subject matter, in this case, the talent agency.

Yamaguchi also noted that some of the negative online comments about Penlight said supporters of the group were members of “feminist groups.”

He said the apparent attacks by anti-feminists have “made the issue more complicated.”

“People are free to criticize, but you could be guilty of defaming someone by saying something that is not true or unfairly spreading personal information,” he said.