Final thoughts on “Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop”
The Johnny Kitagawa documentary seems to have disappeared from the Discourse and for that reason alone I was hesitant to bring it back but I’ve been thinking over what Patrick wrote over on his Substack and think he’s right that there is still a little more to unpack here. He ends his review (which you should read) like this:
Kitagawa’s story is important in 2023 because Kitagawa’s approach to pop has become the global standard. It’s quite literally a major inspiration for how K-pop — an actually successful global endeavor — functions, while the idea of “idols” has become the norm all over, where presenting an image of a performer fans can latch on to trumps music or performance. This is where the program’s pop ignorance hurts it most — they approach all of this as if Johnny’s and Japan are the only problems here, and if the media would just report on it maybe everything would be fixed.
There’s two different threads to untangle here. The first is the thesis pushed by the BBC that the alleged sexual abuse by Johnny Kitagawa and subsequent media coverup is somehow unique to Japan (and the idol industry) and the second is Johnny Kitagawa’s actual legacy in Japanese (and global) pop music.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now: wherever there are vulnerable children, there will be predatory adults looking to take advantage. This is not a problem unique to Japan. I’ll point again to An Open Secret (Hollywood) as well as Jimmy Savile (BBC), Larry Nassar (USA Gymnastics), the allegations against Michael Jackson (Hollywood), Corey Feldman’s crusade (Hollywood), Jeffrey Epstein, and R Kelly (that’s not even getting into institutional abuses from institutions like the Boy Scouts of America, elite British boardings schools, the on-going saga of the Catholic Church, and I could go on.)
I’ve read enough memoirs from former child stars to know that the entertainment world can be a very dark one for the children caught up in it. What Johnny Kitagawa is alleged to have done to the young men under his care is unforgivable but it’s not a problem unique to Japan.
The same can be said of the alleged cover-up. Why didn’t people know or care about the allegations? Why did the BBC have such trouble finding people willing to speak? I can think of a few reasons and none of them have to do with a shadowy conspiracy. For one thing, the allegations against Johnny Kitagawa have been widely known to those who care since at least 1988 when Kita Koji released his tell-all memoir and are easily googled (in Japanese, at least) today. In the book, Mr. Kita goes into graphic detail about what Johnny did to him—exactly the stuff the BBC reporter was trawling for from his interview subjects—but here’s a big part of the picture that the BBC missed: most normal people don’t really care about sordid entertainment scandals and don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on celebrity allegations from decades ago in their everyday lives.
Let me give an example to illustrate: the allegations against certain major Hollywood directors have been in public for some time. Now imagine the BBC wandering around Santa Monica asking normies just trying to go to the Apple store to speak out on the sexual abuse charges against a certain X-Men director. That’s basically what the BBC was doing in Tokyo and I can almost guarantee they’d probably get a similar range of responses.
(Johnny Kitagawa’s status as an American military employee raised again in the wake of the documentary. The implication is he was protected—like Jeffrey Epstein—because he was working for the American government.)
(It’s all a CIA, Korean, Unification Church, Zionist mafia cover-up plot.)
Here’s something else to consider. The BBC speaks to a gay man who says that gay men have enough trouble just living their lives without dragging these charges of male sexual abuse against boys back into the spotlight. The BBC reporter seems exasperated by this response but I think it's an important point. Something the documentary didn’t get into (because they did very little research) are the long-running conspiracy theories alleging that Johnny Kitagawa was an American psy-op. The theory basically goes that the C.I.A. planted Johnny in Asia in order to turn Asian men into homosexual, sissy boys and/or his crimes were covered up because he was a useful tool of the American government. I believe there are also QAJF (the Japanese branch of QAnon) theories linking Johnny’s not just to child abuse but also to the Unification Church and who knows what else.
I can understand why, specifically, gay Japanese men wouldn’t necessarily want to have all of this dragged out into the media again for no clear reason. Johnny Kitagawa, the man, is gone. He’s passed away. And, to this outside observer at least, it does look like the company (and the country) have made changes that would make it more difficult for this to happen again.
One thing the BBC article mentions—to its credit—is that sexual assault between two men wasn’t illegal until 2017. Meaning even if victims like Kita Koji had wanted to bring charges back in the day, what would they have charged him with? Mr. Kitagawa did lose a libel suit, with the court essentially confirming the allegations of sexual abuse but in the days before the Internet it was kind of like the charges against Michael Jackson. If you didn’t read the tabloids or watch entertainment news, it was easy enough to remain oblivious. People liked the product more than they cared (or knew) about the man behind it all. It’s easy to forget what the world was like before we had smartphones and carried the Internet in our pockets everywhere.
As for Johnny’s & Associates, as I mentioned before, the “dorms” were shut down around the time of the tabloid article and the company has made a point of setting an example of idols caught engaging in sexual impropriety or with underage girls. That includes the 2018 example I mentioned before of Tokio’s Yamaguchi Tatsuya. And Takizawa Hideaki took charge of the “Junior” trainees and instituted a lot of changes, including practical things like giving trainees a cut-off date so they don’t waste their prime years back dancing with no hope of a career in the company, like Takahashi Ryu from the documentary. Is the company perfect? No, of course not. But it’s disingenuous to imply it’s still running exactly the same way it did in 1968 or 1998.
Unlike the decades old accusations against Johnny Kitagawa, the young men in Omega X are speaking out right now. It’s in Korea, not Japan, but these young men are idols who want to speak and be heard. Why didn’t the BBC look into this story if they wanted to make a real difference for young male idols? For all of the BBC’s bluster, bursting into the Johnny’s & Associates lobby demanding answers, none of the abuse they’d brought up in the previous hour of the documentary had been recent. The audience was given no evidence that abuse was still occurring in the company that would have necessitated such a public and urgent response.
None of this is meant to excuse what Johnny Kitagawa is alleged to have done (again, unforgivable) but more to put it in context as part of a broader problem. Focusing only on Mr. Kitagawa as an isolated serial abuser isn’t a helpful way of looking at the sexual abuse and exploitation of young people within the entertainment industry.
But what about the legacy of Johnny Kitagawa? I’ve written before about how “Johnny’s & Associates paved the way” and it remains true. The contemporary male idol group performance style that currently dominates K-Pop and is being exported back to Japan comes directly from Johnny’s & Associates. The other major style in J-Pop boy groups is the Exile Tribe style of the unit consisting of a couple of singers supported by a troupe of dancers but this seems almost quaint and old fashioned now.
Johnny’s & Associates was also well ahead of the curve on understanding the importance of IP and branding. This is something that has caused some difficulties in the past (i.e. Kimura Takuya and the Judgement game) and international fans (and “industry experts”) have been begging Johnny’s to become more freely accessible in the streaming and Googling age, like K-Pop has done. But the ironic thing is that as we’ve seen Johnny’s & Associates taking baby steps to having more content available for free online, we’ve simultaneously seen K-Pop companies trying to claw back and monetize that same type of content they’d previously been giving away.
The system of fan club memberships, entering lotteries for concert tickets, paid memberships to paywalled content like daily blogs from idols and special video messages… what do you think Hybe has been desperately trying to train fans to do on Weverse? This is the Johnny’s & Associates model.
The subscription based J-Web service has been running for almost 20 years (maybe exactly 20 years?) and while I couldn’t find public MAU numbers the fact that it’s still running after all this time indicates something.
Another Johnny’s & Associates business tactic used from very early on was to broaden their sphere outside the music industry. Johnny’s music sales and concerts are important, sure, but they aren’t the only thing bringing in money to Johnny’s. This is something that has appeared smarter and smarter as CD sales have cratered and the shine has been wearing off of streaming services. As far back as Kita Koji and the Four Leaves, Johnny’s idols appeared in television dramas, moving into variety shows and even as newscasters (or weather forecasting, thank you Abe-chan). Johnny’s idols also have a strong presence in the Japanese theater industry, with popular idols appearing in musicals and other works both under the Johnny’s label and without it. Johnny’s idols now appear in SASUKE (Ultimate Ninja Warrior) and walk the runway for major fashion houses. Johnny’s idols have voiced beloved anime characters and provided singing voices for localized Disney soundtracks in Japan.
(Arashi x Mickey Mouse collaboration merchandise.)
Speaking of Disney, there’s a long association of Johnny’s idols with Disney (there is a trend of Johnny’s fans using the Tokyo Disney character “Duffy” as a mascot for their favorite members); and Johnny’s are associated with Japan’s ubiquitous convenience stores as well as with any number of national brands like Japan Airlines. One could see the push of characters like BT21 as part of an attempt to replicate this.
While Johnny’s seemed to be falling behind during the pandemic-era massive sales/streaming boom of BTS, we’re now seeing BTS’s parent company Hybe admit to falling metrics on both counts and it’s seeming like a less and less sustainable business plan. SM Entertainment with Bubble and Hybe with Weverse have moved into the world of paid web content like Johnny’s but is it too little too late? Kpop idols are nowhere near as ubiquitous in Korea as Johnny’s idols are in Japan. There are some exceptions, of course—Astro’s Cha Eun-Woo and 2PM’s Taecyeon in dramas; SHINee’s Key and Winner’s Mino in variety—but (at least as an outside observer) there isn’t the same degree of penetration of idol actors in dramas, on variety shows, as newscasters, and on the stage.
A big part of the problem for K-Pop companies is that the market has become almost too broad. Can a single group really devote the attention necessary to sustain a long idol career in every market, all over the world? Or will K-Pop have to pick and choose? Devote all your time to America and ignore Japan like BTS did? Focus on Latin America like Super Junior or Thailand like Got7?
I’ve seen stans of certain K-Pop groups saying “this isn’t a group project” when their favorites are lumped in with the rest of K-Pop but, actually, it is. We’ve discussed this on my podcast before but the idea of the ecosystem is important. Johnny’s & Associates is both its own contained ecosystem with its traditions and songs and built in fandom for new groups but it also exists in the broader Japanese entertainment industry, with strong ties to big export products like anime, television dramas, movies, etc. Within the last few years, especially, “K-Pop” has become an ecosystem unto itself and while there are some good points to that—e.g. an existing fandom for “K-Pop”—the negative side is that the idols exist in a bubble and there can be a lot of confusion and conflict from that broader global “K-Pop” fanbase when the idols want to cross over into Korean mainstream entertainment to build career stability. Can the K-Pop idol exist today outside of the global K-Pop bubble in the same way a Johnny’s idol can exist outside of the Johnny’s bubble?
All of this is to say that Johnny Kitagawa has left behind a complicated legacy and none of that legacy, good and bad, was done justice in the BBC documentary. The documentary has been buried in the media cycle and rightfully so. I can only hope the next time an English-language broadcaster decides to tackle the decades-long legacy of Johnny Kitagawa, they actually do some real research.