[KineJapan] Straight Dope on Johnny from MS

[Markus Nornes]

Mark Schilling writes the straight dope on notorious Johnny Kitamura, who
recently passed away. I didn’t read the papers since the death, but I did
see several television tributes to the man and all of them were
hagiographic cleansings.

Mark’s piece is unflinching.

“What the mass media elided, however, were allegations that Kitagawa
sexually abused the young male talents in his employ. The first to make
such charges, in graphically explicit diaries published in 1988, was a
former member of the Four Leaves, a group that Kitagawa launched in 1968
and was his first to achieve chart-topping success. Another former Johnny’s
talent made similar claims in a 1996 tell-all book, saying he had witnessed
Kitagawa forcing a boy to engage in sex in an agency dormitory.

The culmination, however, was a 1999 series of articles in the weekly
tabloid Shukan Bunshun that described sexual abuse of ten teenaged male
talents. A Parliamentary hearing examined the claims, but Kitagawa denied
everything and sued the magazine.”

https://variety.com/2019/film/asia/johnny-kitagawa-power-abuse-japanese-media-omerta-1203271575/

The other story here is whether Johnny’s death will lead to a loosening of
the grip the agencies have over both their talent and the entertainment
business itself.

M






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*Markus Nornes*
*Professor of Asian Cinema*
Department of Film, Television and Media, Department of Asian Languages and
Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design

*Department of Film, Television and Media*
*6348 North Quad*
*105 S. State Street*
*Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
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