Johnny Kitagawa

John Hiromu Kitagawa (Japanese name Hiromu Kitagawa (喜多川 擴, Kitagawa Hiromu); October 23, 1931 – July 9, 2019), known professionally as Johnny Kitagawa (ジャニー喜多川, Janī Kitagawa), was a Japanese business magnate, promoter and record producer. He was best known as the founder of Johnny & Associates, a talent agency for numerous popular boy bands in Japan. He held the Guinness World Records for the most No. 1 artists, the most No. 1 singles, and the most concerts produced by an individual.^[1]

Kitagawa assembled, produced and managed more than a dozen popular bands, including Tanokin Trio, Hey! Say! JUMP, SMAP, Arashi, Kanjani8, V6, NEWS and KAT-TUN. Kitagawa's influence spread beyond music to the realms of theatre and television. Regarded as one of the most powerful figures in the Japanese entertainment industry, he held a virtual monopoly on the creation of boy bands in Japan for more than 40 years.^[2] Kitagawa also founded the idol trainee system, where talents are signed on to the agency and trained until they are ready to debut professionally, which has been adopted by other idol industries. Kitagawa himself avoided the public spotlight. He rarely permitted his photograph to be taken, and did not make public appearances with his groups. A memorial concert was held after his death in 2019, with 154 of Kitagawa's artists and other celebrities in attendance.

From 1988 to 2000, Kitagawa was the subject of a number of claims that he had taken advantage of his position to engage in improper sexual relationships with boys under contract to his talent agency, though no criminal charges were ever filed against him. In 2023, four years after his death, his sexual abuse was publicised more widely after a report concluded that he committed sexual abuse from the early 1970s until the mid-2010s, including the rape of hundreds of boys who were members of Johnny & Associates before their debut.^[3][4] As of 2023, a reported number of 478 persons have claimed to have been victimized by Kitagawa, of those, 325 sought compensation, and only 150 have been confirmed to have belonged in the company.^[5] Later in the year, Johnny & Associates announced its name would change to Smile Up, and that anything bearing the name "Johnny", such as related companies and performing groups, would be changed to remove Kitagawa's name.

John Hiromu Kitagawa^[6] was born in 1931 in Los Angeles, California, United States, Johnny Kitagawa returned with his family to Japan in 1933. His father Rev. Taido Kitagawa was a Buddhist priest and the third head bishop of the Koyasan Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo from 1924 to 1933.^[7] His older sister was Mary Yasuko Fujishima.^[8] Kitagawa taught English to orphans from the Korean War for the United States Army.^[8] In the early 1950s, he returned to Japan to work at the United States Embassy. While walking through Yoyogi Park in Tokyo, he encountered a group of boys playing baseball. He recruited them to form a singing group, acting as their manager. He named the group "Johnnys".^[2]

Johnnys achieved a measure of success by using a then-novel formula of mixing attractive performers singing popular music with coordinated dance routines. Johnnys were the first all-male pop group in Japan, and set the pattern that Kitagawa followed with his subsequent acts.^[2] The term "Johnny's" came to apply generically to any of the performers under Kitagawa's employ.^[2] Concurrently, he graduated from Sophia University and received his bachelor's degree in International Studies.

In 1968, Kitagawa achieved wider success with a four-member boy band known as Four Leaves. The song and dance group met with success, as reflected by seven consecutive appearances on the annual invitation-only Kōhaku Uta Gassen, beginning in 1970.^[9] Four Leaves performed together for ten years before disbanding in 1978. In 2002, Kitagawa oversaw the band's reunion.^[9] Kitagawa went on to assemble, produce and manage many of the top all-male bands in Japan, including groups such as Hey! Say! JUMP, SMAP, Tokio, V6, Arashi, Tackey & Tsubasa, Kanjani8, NEWS, KAT-TUN, and KinKi Kids among many others.^[2]

Kitagawa was able to expand his sphere of influence to television, as his performers regularly appeared on television, with many appearing on their own variety programs. They regularly acted as pitchmen for commercial products, and appeared in movies.^[10][11] The success of Kitagawa's performers led to increased profitability, and Johnny & Associates generated 2.9 billion yen in annual profits at the height of the boy band boom.^[10] In 1997, performers belonging to the talent agency appeared in more than 40 television programs, and another 40 commercials.^[10][12] The success of his company made Kitagawa one of the richest men in Japan.^[13] He held the Guinness World Records for the most No. 1 artists, the most No. 1 singles, and the most concerts produced by an individual.^[1]

Kitagawa repeatedly employed a standard formula in the development and marketing of his acts.^[14] Johnny & Associates held open tryouts for potential performers. The production agency recruited boys as young as ten into a talent pool known as Johnny's Juniors.^[2] Successful applicants lived in a company dormitory and attended a company-run school. They trained to hone their showmanship in the form of singing, dancing and acting.^[11] Kitagawa held an annual summer festival known as "Johnny's Summary".

Promising members of Johnny's Jr. appeared alongside established members of Kitagawa's stable of entertainers. The junior members acted as background dancers for the major acts, to allow for name recognition prior to being launched as a separate group.^[2] The members of the Juniors appeared in on Hachi-ji da J, a weekly television variety show. Members sang, danced, and performed in comedic sketches as they further developed the skills to graduate to a major act.^[16]

Kitagawa's focus was on the development of his groups as complete entertainers. Shonentai, for example, did not release a single until it had been together for more than seven years.^[15] In a 1996 interview, Kitagawa said "I'm not very interested in records. Once you release a record, you have to sell that record. You have to push one song only. You can't think of anything else. It's not good for the artist."^[15]

Once launched, Kitagawa was known to use his established groups to induce television stations to report on his newer acts, and ensure favorable press coverage for his acts and himself.^[11][13] Programs that gave unfavorable coverage did not receive interviews or television appearance from popular stars managed by Kitagawa.^[12] Kitagawa maintained a high degree of control over his acts,^[2][17] to the extent that their images did not appear on the company website.^[2] Performers were expected to maintain a public image that was conducive to marketing to young women. As a result, members of bands produced by Kitagawa avoided public mention of their private lives.^[17] Kitagawa himself avoided the public spotlight. He rarely permitted his photograph to be taken, and did not make public appearances with his groups.^[2][17]

On July 9, 2019, Kitagawa died at a hospital in Tokyo after suffering a subarachnoid hemorrhage stroke on June 18, at the age of 87.^[18][19][20] A memorial concert was held on September 4, 2019, at the Tokyo Dome, with 154 of Johnny's artists and other celebrities in attendance, including Akiko Wada and Dewi Sukarno.^[21][22] His body was cremated, and his ashes were distributed to several people, including Masahiro Nakai.^[23]

Following Kitagawa's death in 2019, Johnny & Associates began expanding accessibility for their talent.^[24] This included the opening of an official Twitter account for itself (which shared information about Johnny's talent, mostly in English), as well as different social media accounts for the artists.^{[25][26][27][28]}

In the early 1960s, Kitagawa was accused of sexually assaulting students at Shin Geino Gakuin, a talent training school located in Toshima Ward, Tokyo.

In 1988, former Four Leaves member Koji Kita alleged in his book Dear Hikaru Genji that he had been propositioned by Kitagawa and that Kitagawa operated a casting couch.^[29] In 1989, Johnnys member Ryo Nakatani published similar allegations in his book Johnny's Revenge.^[30] In 1996, former Johnny Jr.'s member Junya Hiramoto alleged in his book All About Johnnys that Kitagawa shared the boys' communal dormitory and insisted on washing their backs at bath time.^[29]

In 2001, Shūkan Bunshun ran a series of similar sexual harassment allegations along with claims that Kitagawa had allegedly forced the boys to drink alcohol and smoke.^{[29][31][32][33]} Johnny & Associates sued Shukan Bunshunfor defamation, and in 2002, the Tokyo District Court ruled in favor of Kitagawa, awarding him ¥8.8 million in damages.^[29][31] In 2003, the fine was lowered to ¥1.2 million on the basis that the drinking and smoking allegations were defamatory, while the sexual harassment claims were not.^[31] Kitagawa filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of Japan. It was rejected in 2004.^[34] The case saw minimal coverage in Japan, with many journalists attributing it to Kitagawa's influence on Japanese mass media.^[6][35] In 2023, The Asahi Shimbun speculated that the Japanese media also initially did not take the news seriously because men were not seen as sexual assault victims at the time and thus the news was seen as "gossip"; and because Shūkan Bunshun had lost the initial lawsuit.^[30] Altogether, there were at least eight books and magazine articles about the abuse before the 2023 BBC documentary.^[36]

In March 2023, the BBC released a documentary centered on the sexual abuse claims against Kitagawa, Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop, presented by Mobeen Azhar. In response, Johnny & Associates stated that they were creating "transparent organizational structures" that would be announced later in the year.^[3]

In April 2023, musician and former Johnny's Jr. member Kauan Okamoto told a press conference held at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan that he had been subjected to sexual abuse by Kitagawa on a number of occasions between 2012 and 2016, and called on the management to acknowledge the misconduct.^[37] Okamoto estimated that between 100 and 200 boys were invited to Kitagawa's home during his time at Johnny's, and claimed that when Kitagawa told one of his guests to go to bed early, everyone knew "it was your turn".^[38][39] In response to Okamoto's press conference, Johnny & Associates released a statement saying that it would "continue its unified effort to thoroughly ensure compliance without exception, and tackle strengthening of a system of governance," but the company did not directly address the allegations at the time.^[39] Later that month, NHK reported that Johnny & Associates was interviewing their employees and talent, and had sent a document out to business partners saying that they were looking into the allegations. The document said that the company took the allegations seriously and that their investigations so far had uncovered no cases of misconduct, adding that they were aware that such in-house interviews were not enough to uncover the truth.^[40] After the press conference, NHK reported on the abuse on April 13. This was the first television report on the scandal by NHK.^[41]

On May 14, 2023, Julie Keiko Fujishima, Kitagawa's niece and president of Johnny & Associates, issued an apology to those who had alleged sexual abuse by Kitagawa. She added that she was committed to implementing measures addressing the victims' needs.^[42] Two days after Johnny & Associates released their statement, Okamoto and the former Johnny's Jr. Yasushi Hashida, along with Okamoto attended a parliamentary meeting at the National Diet organized by the Constitutional Democratic Party. Hashida said that he was sexually abused around twice by Kitagawa when he was 13 years old.^[43] Both Hashida and Okamoto credited coverage of the sexual abuse allegations by the foreign press as being key to paving the way for its coverage in the domestic press.^[44][45]

In July 2023, the United Nations Human Rights Council investigated Kitagawa's abuse at the agency.^[46][47] An independent probe established by Johnny & Associates reported the findings of their investigation on August 29, 2023, saying that Kitagawa repeatedly committed sexual abuse from the early 1970s until the mid-2010s.^[48] On September 7, 2023, Johnny & Associates formally acknowledged Kitagawa's abuse for the first time.^[49]

On September 6, 2023, Guinness World Records decided to remove Kitagawa's achievement of producing the most top songs on the pop music chart from its official website. However, they did not eliminate his record titles, as he was never convicted.^[50] This decision was accepted as a wise decision by the newly appointed president of Johnny & Associates, Higashiyama.^[51] Companies such as Suntory and McDonald's which had previously contracted with Johnny & Associates for advertising or promotional campaigns decided to either retract or not renew their contracts with Johnny's artists as a response to Kitagawa's scandal. Suntory demanded plans of prevention and reparations for the victims as prerequisites of reestablishing partnership.^[52][53]

Several major news outlets, including NHK, issued mea culpas in recognition of their years of silence that effectively allowed Kitagawa's sexual abuses to continue unabated.^[54][55] Bungeishunjū and Mobeen Azhar were awarded in 2023 by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (FCCJ) for their coverage of the scandal. The FCCJ likened this scandal to the assassination of Shinzo Abe, citing media silence on the systemic abuses by organizations close to powerful figures.^[56]

Several Japanese news outlets reported on October 1, 2023, that Johnny & Associates was considering creating a new company to manage its performers, while the current Johnny & Associates would change its name and continue to exist for the purpose of compensating abuse victims. It was also reported that Noriyuki Higashiyama, who became the head of Johnny & Associates after the resignation of Julie K. Fujishima, was also expected to head the new company.^[57] On October 2, Johnny & Associates held a press conference to outline their plans, announcing that they would be renaming the current company to Smile Up–taking a name that they had used in their 2020 charity project–effective October 17.^[58][59][60] Smile Up will continue to exist under the ownership of Fujishima and will eventually close down once all sexual abuse compensation requests, which numbered 325 at the time of the announcement, have been processed.^[58]

Higashiyama told reporters that performers working under the new management company "will have the freedom to pursue their own career paths without being restricted or entirely dependent on the company."^[58] It was also announced that anything bearing the name "Johnny", such as related companies and company sections like Johnny's Island and J-Storm and performing groups such as Johnny's West and Kanjani Eight, would undergo changes to remove any trace of the Johnny's name.^[61] Higashiyama said that "all things with the Johnny's name will have to go," while Fujishima, who did not attend the October 2 press conference, said that she wanted to "erase all that remains of Johnny from this world."^[59]

• Azhar, Mobeen (March 6, 2023). "Japan's J-Pop Predator—Exposed for Abuse but Still Revered". BBC News. Retrieved March 9, 2023.
  • Mobeen Azhar (March 7, 2023). Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop (video). BBC 2. Archived from the original on March 8, 2023. Retrieved March 9, 2023. Documentary; video access restricted to the UK.