On June 18, 2019, Johnny Kitagawa was admitted to the hospital due to illness. In the hospital, his “children” all came to visit him. At one time, there were too many people going to the hospital, and the surrounding traffic began to be blocked.
Anyone who knows a little bit about the Japanese entertainment industry knows the name of Johnny’s & Associates created by Kitagawa—this is the “Dream Factory” of the Japanese music idol group. As early as 1962, after Kitagawa founded it, it has been steadily sending “Johnny Boys” integrating popularity, entertainment, and virtue to Japan, even Asia, and the world, from the youth team, Arashi, to Kimura Takuya, Takizawa Hideaki , Kitagawa became popular with countless idols.
At 4 pm on July 9, 2019, Kitagawa, who had been in a coma for more than three weeks, died of subarachnoid hemorrhage caused by a cerebral aneurysm in Tokyo. The eulogy reads: “In the end, Johnny-san came to the end of his life surrounded by his beloved children.” The “Grandfather Xi” of “Dream” is gone, which is a sad “darkest moment”.
Almost four years later, on the evening of March 7, 2023, the BBC released a documentary called “Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop Music”. In the camera, the “children” who once surrounded Kitagawa’s sick bed told about the hidden crimes of “Grandpa Xi”: As the absolute power holder of the entire “star-making” factory, Kitagawa has been sexually assaulting underage male artists for decades , sexual abuse and child sexual abduction.
For many Johnny Boys, the darkest hours began as early as their teens.
now you
”It’s your turn at last, come on, and perform well.”
This wasn’t the boys encouraging each other before they stepped onto the stage, but the helpless joke when they found out who was called out by Kitagawa for the night.
In the huge entertainment empire network built by Kitagawa, if a Japanese boy wants to become a star, Johnny is the only way he must go. Since Johnny’s “cultivation” model runs through the boy’s growth, whether a boy can stand out from the tens of thousands of resumes delivered, whether he can get a chance to debut in the company when practicing business, dancing and singing is all up to Kitagawa alone. Calculate. From selection to training, and then to the alluring debut list, Kitagawa has all the power.
It was also from the interview stage that Kitagawa was looking for a boy he liked. After the selection was over, he would invite the children to one of his apartments to eat and rest.
From selection to training, and then to the alluring debut list, Kitagawa has all the power.
Takuya Kimura in the Japanese drama “10 Seconds to the Future”
Office building of Johnny & Associates
According to the victim’s description, the apartment was a “dormitory” for the boys and a source of nightmares. At night, the boys had to sleep next to each other on the tatami mats, and Kitagawa got into the quilt and molested these boys in series, and some boys were sexually assaulted.
In the documentary, the victim who is willing to uncover the scars describes the “process” of a Johnny boy’s violation: he was 15 years old and passed the screening to enter Johnny’s, and a week later he received an invitation from Kitagawa to play in the “dorm”.
There, Kitagawa suggested that he take a bath and followed him into the bathroom. When the boy refused, he still took off his clothes and “helped” him take a bath, just like “playing with a doll”.
Coming out of the bathroom, he was terrified, but the other boys waiting in the bedroom were unimpressed—everyone, they told him.
In “The Dorm” and throughout Johnny’s, Kitagawa is everything. To reject him is to reject the dream, the stage and the sparkling life.
Since then, the victim was often called by Kitagawa to watch TV and “massage” together, and sexual assault and obscenity happened repeatedly.
Sometimes Kitagawa would drop 50,000 yen as compensation for the boy he sexually assaulted, and sometimes the “compensation” took a more central place on stage.
The absence of Kiyama Shogo, a former member of Johnny’s first-generation popular boy group Hikari GENJI, on the official debut list can prove the arrival and loss of this “compensation”.
At one time, he was Kitagawa’s favorite “doll”, and even had to be fed into his mouth for meals. Of course, sexual assault is not absent either. In order to make his debut dream, Mushan Shougo endured all this “very disgusting”.
Until he found out that he might be injected with estrogen by Kitagawa to suppress his growth and maintain the juvenile state of a little boy, he was scared and began to reject Kitagawa’s invitation many times—until he was kicked out of the official debut list of Hikari GENJI.
Light GENJI, the first generation of Johnny’s popular boy group
professional dream maker
Before the exposure of the BBC documentary, when Kitagawa passed away with honor and love, there was another warm and characteristic statement about Hikari GENJI’s debut list.
Kitagawa did not have more say in casting, nor was he very strict. In his opinion, “children” don’t have to pass his selection to shine, and “want to do” is the most shining thing.
”The children who want to do it, give them the opportunity to do it.” In the few interviews, he talked about the birth of Guang Genji: During a rehearsal break, he asked a group of children, who can skate? Seven kids raised their hands, and they ended up as members of the iconic Japanese idol boy group.
This seemingly random move and the great success it has brought since then seem to be “good luck”, but in fact, Kitagawa’s “casual” is based on his extreme focus on his career.
In order to “do things that have never been done before, and create things that have never been seen before”, Kitagawa put almost all his visible energy into the operation and maintenance of Genesis. Some data about him can prove his intentions: 3 Guinness World Records: “The person who produced the most concerts” – 8419 games; “The person who trained the most gold chart champion singers” – 47 groups of artists; The person who has won the most number one hits on the gold charts” – 439 singles, with a total sales of 150 million copies.
In order to make the concert truly impeccable and the singles produced really sing, Kitagawa will also travel all over the world to learn and find inspiration. But in life, others see him as a person who “always wears the same clothes”, “only loves to eat the simplest omelet rice”, and has no interest in anything other than running Johnny’s.
He seems to be able to spot the uniqueness of each “child”. His own statement is: “Every young person has his own unique temperament, even a dull child is also dull and interesting. No matter what kind of child it is, there is a certain kind of beauty in human beings.” The industry also recognizes this: “Only Kitagawa understands how to select and excavate a child who exists like a diamond from among the many stones.”
Japanese media “Weekly Bunshun” once disclosed Kitagawa’s sexual assault and obscene incidents
Because Kitagawa means “the future”, even the parents of the children will silently obey Kitagawa’s preferences.
These undoubted contributions, such as being admitted to the hospital due to illness until the day before his death, were still running for the next performance of “The Children”, such as the above-mentioned unshakable figures, such as indeed leading the seemingly ordinary children Produce unforgettable music, become an idol who rekindles the audience’s enthusiasm for life… It makes people understand that Kitagawa’s authority does not only stop at the title, he has the ability and is very hardworking, and he has successfully done it in front of and behind the scenes. An excellent dream maker.
On July 10, 2019, TV screens on the side of the road are reporting the news of Johnny Kitagawa’s death on July 9
elephant in the room
For Japanese people, especially Johnny Boys fans, Kitagawa is a dream maker, a “Grandpa Xi” who brings idols, hope and comfort. When Kitagawa passed away, there was a group of cartoons widely circulated: Kitagawa, wearing his signature sunglasses, was wiping a seemingly ordinary stone, and the light of diamonds was faintly exposed from the stone; he threw the polished diamond To the crowd of flowers and light sticks, Diamond became the young man under the spotlight, waving to Kitagawa. At the end of that group of comics, it said: “Thank you for cultivating so much love.” With
so many achievements, so much genuine admiration and love, Kitagawa’s well-known obscene “hobbies” became the elephant in the room . Japanese society, the media, and the public all turn a blind eye to this.
In the company’s “dormitory”, there is only one adult, Kitagawa. Young children not only experience the pain and humiliation of being molested, but at the same time feel the admiration and dependence on Kitagawa in growth and professionalism, and have nowhere to tell in the contradiction.
What is even more desperate is that because Kitagawa means “the future”, even the parents of the children will silently obey Kitagawa’s preferences, and let the children sleep with him in the same bedroom when Kitagawa comes to stay at home-even the parents can’t do it. Standing on their own side, the young “Johnny Boys” are even more unable to determine the rationality of their pain, and can only brainwash themselves with “I like what Grandpa Xi does” to avoid pain.
This also made it more difficult to pursue justice against Kitagawa in the future.
Kitagawa already has great influence in the Japanese media, law, and even politics. The Japanese media “Weekly Bunshun” once disclosed his sexual assault and obscene incidents, but Kitagawa beat him down and sued the weekly for defamation.
Even with a large number of adult testimonies of the victimized “boys”, the Tokyo District Court still ruled against the weekly magazine in the first instance; the Tokyo High Court, in the second instance, agreed that the report of “Kitagawa having same-sex sexual relations” was true, and still ruled that the weekly magazine lost the lawsuit—Japan This shows the protection of Kitagawa from the society.
Following Kitagawa’s death, the New York Times, BBC and other foreign media began to follow up and report on the incident, and more details and more victims also surfaced with the footage of the documentary.
They have all grown up and gradually understand what they have experienced in the past. But it is a pity that some victims have been brainwashing themselves for a long time, classifying Kitagawa’s behavior as “no big deal, a way of expressing liking”, while other victims have been immersed in the inescapable juvenile pain for a long time, Living a bad life.
At the end of the documentary, the film crew interviewed passers-by on the street for their views on this matter; people said with a relaxed expression: the dead are the greatest, so there is no need to mention the past.
Even on his deathbed, Kitagawa was protected. And those boys who walked into Johnny’s full of dreams and suffered violations could only stand forever in the torrential rain without umbrellas.
