Powerhouse Japanese boyband agency Johnny & Associates, which is embroiled in a sexual abuse scandal relating to its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, has announced it will change its name and spl…
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President of Japanese boyband empire Johnny & Associates, Noriyuki Higashiyama , speaks during a press conference in Tokyo on October 2, 2023, to announce the new company name"SMILE-UP". The name change comes amid mounting calls on the powerful talent agency to get rid of reminders of late music mogul Johnny Kitagawa, who the company admitted last month had sexually assaulted young recruits over decades.
“All things with the Johnny’s name will have to go,” Noriyuki Higashiyama, the company’s new leader and a former client at the agencyon Monday, per the AP. “A wounded heart isn’t easy to heal. Compensation on its own will never be enough.” Higashiyama is a TV star and singer in Japan who hasreported.
Rumors of his actions were rampant throughout the years, but gained renewed attention when the BBC aired a documentary about Kitagawa earlier this year. Over the summer, the U.N. Working Group on Business and Human Rights said the allegations involved several hundreds of the company’s talents. as President of the agency, making a public apology to her uncle’s victims. “Both the agency itself and I myself as a person recognize that sex abuse by Johnny Kitagawa took place.
Although some of the allegations were proven in a civil court when Kitagawa was alive, he successfully sued for defamation on at least one occasion, the BBC reported. Most mainstream Japanese media also did not cover the allegations for decades, prompting accusations of an industry cover-up.
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