Johnny Kitagawa sexual abuse scandal

Common card · No. 208929

In 2023, it was revealed that Johnny Kitagawa (1931–2019), the founder of the Japanese talent agency Johnny & Associates, had committed repeated acts of sexual abuse from the 1950s until the mid-2010s. Considered one of the most powerful figures in the Japanese entertainment industry, Kitagawa held a virtual monopoly on the creation of boy bands in Japan for more than forty years. No criminal charges were ever filed against Kitagawa during his lifetime, as the Japanese media had covered up the abuse without reporting it at all. The revelations drew comparisons in the media and among the public to the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal 11 years prior, owed to similarities in the scale and nature of the abuse, its institutional coverup, and its posthumous exposure. Between 1988 and 2000, Kitagawa was the subject of numerous allegations that he had taken advantage of his position to engage in improper sexual relationships with adolescent boys under contract to Johnny & Associates. Kitagawa...

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