'I apologise to his victims': Japan's most successful boyband agency admits founder's sexual abuse
Over the years, aspiring boyband idols collectively dubbed "Johnny's Jrs" sought his tutelage, and the panel estimated that at least "a few hundred" of them had been victimised. Julie Keiko Fujishima, outgoing president of entertainment company Johnny & Associates Inc. bows during a press conference Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023, in Tokyo. TOKYO: The president of Japan’s biggest and most successful boyband agency admitted on Thursday that its late founder sexually abused young aspiring stars, decades after allegations first emerged. Johnny Kitagawa died aged 87 in 2019, having engineered the birth of J-pop mega-groups including SMAP, TOKIO and Arashi that amassed adoring fans across Asia. Allegations that he abused young men who wanted to be stars surfaced in Japanese media in 1999. But it was not until this year that they ignited full-on soul-searching, following a BBC documentary and denunciations by victims. “Both the agency itself and I myself as a person...