A record company in Kagoshima city has been castigated as engaging in “revenge porn” with its plan to sell a CD featuring nude photos of singer Aki Yashiro, who died in December 2023.

An online petition has spread to halt the sale, while music companies are distancing themselves from the CD. Legal experts and even a governor have voiced their disapproval and disgust with the plan.

But the record company, New Century Records Co., has shown no signs of backing down.

‘JUST BUSINESS’

New Century Records announced on its website that the new CD will be released on April 21 and include Yashiro’s hit song “Funauta.” The site also said the CD package will feature “two full nude photos” taken by Yashiro’s live-in partner when she was in her 20s.

Hiroshi Hayakawa, president of New Century Records, said in a telephone interview that his company about 25 years ago bought the master recording rights to some of Yashiro’s songs along with public and private photographs of her.

The pictures came from a person associated with a record company that Yashiro used to belong to before it went bankrupt, he said.

“There is also a purchase agreement,” Hayakawa said.

He insisted the purpose of releasing the CD with the photos “is just business.”

“What law is being violated? If you have a problem with it, just buy the rights,” he said.

Before her death at age 73, Yashiro established a company in Tokyo called Yashiro Music and Gallery Inc. to manage the copyrights and portrait rights inherited from an agency she belonged to.

Makoto Ono, president of Yashiro Music and Gallery, released a statement on April 14 about the CD sale.

“This is an extremely distasteful event and one that we can never condone,” the statement said.

A petition titled “Protect Aki Yashiro’s dignity and stop revenge porn” has been gaining support on the online site Change.org to prevent the release of the CD.

The petition states: “This situation is more than just about entertainment; it is a violation of the rights and dignity of the deceased. If this is allowed to go unchecked, all women artists will be working in fear of the possibility that their dignity will be trampled upon after their death.”

By late afternoon on April 16, about 5,500 people had signed the petition.

SUPPORT FROM HOMETOWN

The singer was born in Kumamoto Prefecture and used the stage name Yashiro after her hometown, Yatsushiro city.

She became known as the “queen of enka” (Japanese ballads) with her distinctive husky and deep voice and inimitable seductive style.

After her death, the Kumamoto prefectural citizens’ honor award was presented to Yashiro in honor of her achievements.

In August 2024, an unveiling ceremony was held to display a relief of Yashiro in the lobby of the prefectural government office.

Referring to the planned CD sale, Kumamoto Governor Takashi Kimura said at a news conference on April 16: “If true, this is an offensive and unforgivable act. The sale should be stopped.”

In July 2020, after the prefecture suffered enormous damage from torrential rain, Kimura asked Yashiro to visit temporary housing facilities to comfort the evacuees. The singer gladly accepted.

The governor said Yashiro must not have had any intention to publicize personal photos of herself.

“It is important that the dignity of Ms. Yashiro and her bereaved family be respected. I hope that Ms. Yashiro, who is the pride of the people of the prefecture, will not be disrespected,” Kimura said.

POTENTIAL CRIMINAL CASE

Kazuko Ito, a lawyer specializing in sexual violence victimization, said sales of CDs with nude photos could “fall under the category of revenge porn and may be illegal.”

The law for the prevention of revenge porn punishes those who “provide private and sexual images to an unspecified person or many people through a telecommunication line in a way that allows a third party to identify the person who is the subject of the image.”

The law also applies to people who “provide such images to an unspecified person or many people or display them publicly.”

“If (the photos) are released posthumously without the person’s permission, it would be trampling on the dignity of the deceased,” Ito said. “If there is a complaint by the bereaved family, there is a good chance that it will become a criminal case.”

Keiichiro Hattori, a lawyer specializing in criminal law, also raised legal concerns about the planned sale.

“If the photos were taken in a personal relationship and not for work, the common wisdom is that it is difficult to believe that (Yashiro) would have consented to showing them to a third party,” he said. “The fact that she didn’t disclose (the photos) before her death makes it unlikely that she consented to it after the fact.”

Hattori said the public has taken notice of the issue, and criticism is growing about the “ethically unacceptable” sale.

“It should stop now, and it is important that concerned parties and lawyers address this issue with wisdom,” he said.

ORDERS CANCELED

The CD industry has scrambled to respond to the situation.

Tower Records Japan Inc. on April 10 stopped accepting orders for the CD so that it could check the contents of the special offer.

Later, after a distribution company informed Tower Records that it would no longer be handling the CD, the music company took down the order page for the CD.

Tower Records said it has no plans to sell the CD in the future, and customers who already ordered the CD have been notified by email that the product is no longer being sold.

“We are refraining from giving the reason” for discontinuing sales of the CD, the company told The Asahi Shimbun.

Rakuten Books, which is in charge of CD and DVD transactions at Rakuten Group Inc., also suspended orders of the CD.

“Considering various circumstances, the product in question cannot be ordered at this time,” Rakuten Books told The Asahi Shimbun, adding that it had canceled already-placed orders of customers.

(This article was written by Junki Watanabe, Mami Ueda and Kayoko Sekiguchi.)