Photo/Illutration Victims who claim they were sexually abused by Johnny Kitagawa and their lawyer attend a news conference in Tokyo on Jan. 15. (Amane Shimazaki)

The sexual abuse scandal involving the late Johnny Kitagawa, which made headlines last year, is nowhere near being settled and has been carried over into the new year with a mountain of unresolved problems.

Johnny & Associates Inc., the talent agency founded by the showbiz guru, has renamed itself and taken other measures in seeking to start over.

As things now stand, however, we can only say there are more anxieties about the future of the agency’s successors than there are expectations for them.

It was announced last month that a new company, Starto Entertainment Inc., had been set up to take over entertainers from the former Johnny’s agency.

Atsushi Fukuda, Starto’s president, who was recruited from the outside, has been a critic of the old trading practice of the entertainment business, such as restricting transfers of talent between agencies and exercising influence in matters of work.

There is much room for improvement in the industry, particularly in the area of working conditions, where unreasonable contracts and harassment are rampant.

Fukuda, who said he wishes to draw on this opportunity to modernize the world of show business, should take the lead in working to realize what he believes in.

Suspicion persists, in the meantime, that Starto has inherited the negative legacy of Johnny’s as a whole.

No explanations have been provided on Starto’s capital composition. It also remains unclear how the new company plans to procure the funding for taking over intellectual property and other rights that the Johnny’s agency possessed.

Starto didn't hold a news conference to mark its embarkation, even though it did hold a meeting with a limited number of news reporters. The nontransparent measures being taken by the new company is so evocative of those taken by Johnny’s.

To much surprise, Fukuda asserted he has no intention to call on people to stop defaming those claiming to be abuse victims. He said that issuing such a warning is not a role that Starto should play.

Let us recall, however, that Yoshihiko Inohara, who had been in one of the central posts at Johnny’s, was named Starto’s chief operating officer. It is also said that many of the entertainers and employees of Johnny’s are expected to transfer to Starto.

The new company could thus hardly be described as unrelated to Johnny’s. Fukuda should not be allowed to behave as if the problems were none of his business.

There is also mounting public distrust of Smile-Up Inc., which was renamed from the former Johnny & Associates, and is in charge of compensating abuse victims.

A group of abuse victims held a news conference earlier this month to call on Smile-Up for improvements.

They argued, for example, that they cannot decide whether the compensation amounts being proposed by Smile-Up are appropriate and fair because the standards for calculating them and other details have not been disclosed.

They also complained that the loss of earnings due to the abuse has not been taken into account.

It is the minimum duty of Smile-Up, the offending company, to engage in sincere dialogue in response to these complaints.

The same old mindset, as inward-looking as ever, is strongly in evidence in the stances of both companies.

More than 900 individuals have reported abuse to the consultation contacts for compensation. Despite the enormous scale of the problem, however, the companies apparently have yet to realize the gravity of their social responsibility.

Starto and Smile-Up will never restore lost confidence unless they realize open and fair corporate management.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 28

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