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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 split into two companies. In September, the pop giant acknowledged that Kitagawa, who died in 2019 at age 87, had sexually abused boys signed by the agency over a span of several decades.
At a press conference in Tokyo on Monday, it was revealed that an external committee for victim relief set up by the agency had received reports from 478 people, 325 of whom are seeking compensation. The agency, which is rebranding as Smile-Up to solely focus on identifying and compensating victims, said it would begin payments in November, local media reports.
That Tokyo-based company will eventually be dissolved, but its performers can join an as-yet unnamed independent company that is being set up to manage talent.
“All things with the Johnny’s name will have to go,” Noriyuki Higashiyama, the company’s new leader and a former client at the agency said on 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 has also been accused of sexual misconduct – allegations he denied on Monday, the BBC reported.
Kitagawa was never charged over any of the accusations. In late August, an investigation team found that he began sexually abusing boys in the 1950s, the Japan Times reported.
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.
In early September, Kitagawa’s niece, Julie Fujishima, resigned 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. I apologize to his victims from the bottom of my heart,” she said at the time.
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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