Criticism has intensified against newspapers and TV stations over their long failure to adequately report on the suspected sexual abuse committed by Johnny Kitagawa, founder of influential talent agency Johnny & Associates Inc.

Kitagawa died in 2019, but as far back as the 1980s, former members of Johnny & Associates said he had sexually abused them.

The Asahi Shimbun sent questionnaires to four major newspapers and five Tokyo-based TV stations to find out about how they reported on the early allegations.

From about 1999 and 2000, the Shukan Bunshun weekly magazine published a number of articles that contained details about Kitagawa’s sexual abuse.

Johnny & Associates sued Bungeishunju Ltd., publisher of Shukan Bunshun, arguing the articles were defamatory.

In 2002, the Tokyo District Court ruled that references about sexual harassment in the articles were not factual. But the following year, the Tokyo High Court’s ruling recognized sexual harassment, and the Supreme Court finalized that ruling in 2004.

The newspapers said they ran articles about the court rulings, but no TV station reported on the court cases, the survey showed.

The Asahi Shimbun ran short articles about the rulings.

No company conducted its own reporting on the suspected sexual abuse.

In March this year, the BBC aired a one-hour documentary, “Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop,” detailing Kitagawa’s suspected sexual assaults against minors and the Japanese media’s decades-long silence on the issue.

In April, Kauan Okamoto, a former member of “Johnny’s Jr.,” an umbrella term referring to pre-debut idols in the making, held a news conference to describe the abuse he suffered at the hands of Kitagawa.

Many media organizations then reported on the incidents of abuse described by former talent agency members.

On May 14, Julie Keiko Fujishima, the current president of Johnny & Associates, apologized for the scandal in a video.

By that time, all major media organizations had reported on the issue.

Most of the media organizations said they sincerely accepted the criticism directed against them for remaining silent for so long. They vowed to use the lessons learned for future reporting.

MALE-DOMINATED MEDIA

A number of experts were asked why media organizations did not report on the sexual abuse for years.

Yoshihiro Oto, a professor of media studies at Sophia University, said newspaper companies should be more heavily criticized for their silence because they were not as closely associated with Johnny & Associates as TV stations.

Members of the talent agency had become fixtures on TV dramas and variety shows as well as in commercials.

Oto said newspaper companies “lacked the recognition that Johnny & Associates was one form of ‘authority’ because they placed topics about the arts lower on the priority scale in comparison to politics, business and city news.”

Yoshitaka Yoshino, a professor of media studies at Chikushi Jogakuen University in Fukuoka Prefecture, once worked as a producer at a commercial TV station, mainly handling news programs.

He said there appeared to be a silent agreement within the company to avoid the sexual abuse topic.

“I believe the company refrained from reporting on what was happening because it would have been hurt if members (of Johnny & Associates) refused to appear in our programs,” Yoshino said.

While he said those working in news felt the matter went beyond their control, he also expressed regret for ignoring the problem.

Yoshino added that nothing has changed among media organizations, which will still only report on an issue after other companies begin to do so.

Toko Tanaka, a professor of media and culture studies at the University of Tokyo, noted that the societal atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s was different from what it is today.

“There was no recognition then about the seriousness of sexual abuse in general,” Tanaka said. “Regarding sexual abuse of men, the general perception was that men could not be victims of sex assault because they were not thought to be weak.”

She added that if newspapers and TV stations had reported on the problem back then, it would have stopped the expansion of such abuse.

Asked why no reporting was done on Johnny & Associates until recently, Tanaka said, “There was likely a low awareness about sexual violence because mass media continues to hold a value set heavily distorted toward a male-centered one.”

According to Nihon Shinbun Kyokai (Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association), the ratio of female reporters increased from 10.2 percent in 1999 to 24.1 percent in 2022. But only 9.4 percent of management positions at newspaper companies are filled by women.

COMMENT FROM THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

Shu Nomura, general editor and managing editor at The Asahi Shimbun’s Tokyo Head Office, issued the following statement:

We have received severe criticism from our readers about why the mass media failed to properly report on the suspected sexual abuse by the founder of a talent agency representative of Japan over many years.

While The Asahi Shimbun did publish articles about court rulings concerning articles that appeared in the Shukan Bunshun, the issue was not played up to a large degree.

We did not aggressively report on this issue until recently, when victims of the abuse held news conferences to relate their experiences.

I believe the root of the problem was an insufficient recognition about sexual abuse, especially sexual abuse against males.

We sincerely accept the criticism from our readers.

Regarding the recent reporting, discussions were held within the company about how the articles should be written under the circumstance of being unable to get the other side of the story since Johnny Kitagawa is dead.

We reached the conclusion that these articles should be presented to society based on the gravity of the testimony provided by the victims who held news conferences while disclosing their identities to describe what they went through.

Sexual violence has been described as “murder of the soul” because it leaves deep scars in the victim’s later lives.

With such an understanding of the issue, The Asahi Shimbun in recent years has run series of articles about sexual violence against children as well as incidents of sexual violence in the cultural and arts fields.

We will continue to report on the issue of sexual abuse, which is a major violation of human rights.