In response to the sexual assault issue surrounding its late founder Johnny Kitagawa, Johnny's Jimusho announced on 26 May 2023 the following actions it has taken or will take going forward to address the problem and adopt preventive measures.
1) Establishment of a contact point for psychological consultation and care
* This will be effective from 31 May 2023
* It is of utmost importance that the psychological health of its artistes, be it former or current, is taken care of regardless of whether they have spoken out about being personally affected by this issue or their status with the agency.
* As such, this service is available to all Johnny's Jimusho artistes and staff members, even those who had already left as of now.
* With privacy in mind, the psychotherapists and licensed psychologists who will be manning this service, will provide the best care possible to each and everyone who comes for the consultation.
* Supervisor: Kamoshita Ichiro - psychologist and had held these positions in the past i.e. Minister of the Environment, State Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare and Health, Labor and Welfare Committee Chairman. Honorary member of Japanese Society of Psychosomatic Medicine and the advisor of Japanese Society of Psychosomatic Internal Medicine.
2) Establishment of a special team comprising of external experts to identify problem areas and come up with measures to prevent future recurrences
* This problem has brought to light the governance issues in the company.
* After consulting various experts, former Public Prosecutor General Hayashi Makoto who is currently a lawyer, was suggested to lead the special team handling the analysis of the company's problem areas and come up with measures to deal with them.
* Other members in the team include Asukai Nozomu (psychologist, director of National Network for Victim Support and chief director of Victim Support Center of Tokyo) and a female researcher in the field of clinical psychology who is involved in the support of victims of sexual assault crimes (name to be revealed later as the procedure to get clearance for her involvement in this from the organisation where she works at is still in progress)
3) Appointment of 3 independent directors who will implement the measures put forward by the special team and management changes to prevent future recurrences
* Nakai Tokutaro - Vice Minister of the Environment and has extensive experience in being an advisor in corporate reforms.
* Shirai Kazuyuki - Japanese baseball player who has been the coach of the Japanese national baseball team since 2021 and has provided coaching and support to various companies
* Fujii Mari - Vice chairman of the Daini Tokyo Bar Association and holds the post of investigation committee member and advisor to harassment issues. Experienced in the investigation of corporate power harassment issues and her legal work focuses on corporate law issues such as corporate governance and compliance
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Much has been spoken about this sexual assault issue involving Kitagawa Johnny ever since the BBC documentary aired and was credited for setting the discussion going publicly as compared to the hush-hush rumours and silence in the Japanese media for many years.
I'm not going to go into details on this issue (there should be a lot of information out there if you want to read about it) but would like to just offer my take on the response from Johnny's Jimusho so far from a layman's perspective:
- The tricky issue here is, the perpetrator is dead. Any legal action taken will probably be against Johnny's Jimusho for its poor management controls and for the personnel who allowed the unacceptable conduct to go on, whether knowingly or not and actively facilitating these acts to happen or passively turning a blind eye to what was done. And that leaves a pretty bad aftertaste at least for me because the one responsible got away with it while those who may and may not be involved (all the artistes and staff in Johnny's now) will have to bear the repercussions, be it actual damage or undesirable reputations effects.
- I was sort of expecting Julie K. Fujishima to hide behind a written statement again during this scandal so I give her credit for at least appearing in the apology video with her face clearly shown. However, the content of the video and choice of words leaves much to be desired - be it the denial of knowing what happened, being unable to speak out or ask her uncle and mother about what had happened or that she was in no position to do anything. I get the part that she might not be able to question the authority back then when these acts reportedly happened during their reign and total control of the agency but it is unbelievable that she had no knowledge at all since the rumours were going on for decades. And I found it quite odd that she was speaking at such a slow speed in the video, as if she was reading from a script and made sure that she pronounced each word syllable by syllable for clarity. Maybe she was advised to do so by her lawyers but it did come across as staged and they were probably not her own thoughts. Sincerity is clearly lacking here.
- There have been questions or criticism about why some Johnny's artistes used to speak so fondly of Kitagawa Johnny and constantly shared interesting or funny anecdotes with him in variety shows, concerts or interviews despite what he did to his victims. Let's put it this way, everyone probably shows a different side to different people depending on the nature of their relationships. And it's a well-known fact that Kitagawa had favourites among his artistes and treated them differently from the rest. From the accounts which have surfaced so far, he also seemed to be the type who would "cut off" someone if the latter did not do his bidding. While he may have been a harmless and funny elderly man to some of his artistes, you can't deny that he also had a darker side which he showed to his victims.
The people who admired and looked up to him all these years may need time to confront these uncomfortable facts dished out in the public right now. Rumours swirling for decades are one thing but personal accounts in the media with the victims being prepared to disclose their identities takes this to another level. It's unreasonable to expect the artistes to switch tones and criticise Kitagawa overnight just to be seen as politically correct or in line with what society expects them to do. They may feel enraged, upset or even betrayed to find out that the person they used to trust and respect turned out to be like this. And there is a likelihood that the agency may not have authorised them to speak out on this issue so attacking them for not saying something, not saying enough or taking a stand seems to be going a bit too far at the moment. Even the timing of who says what at what time becomes an attacking point.
- There is another article from Bunshun which looks at the media's response to this issue. Will be talking more about this aspect in another post.
- With regard to the actions announced as outlined above, it remains to be seen if they will indeed be effective. However, doing something concrete is better than being ambiguous about what they intend to do so hopefully, this will turn out to be something positive in the end. The thing though is, I think there needs to be controls in future to avoid having Julie K. or anyone else having the power to veto against everything. If this isn't addressed, any suggested measures while well-intended and supposedly should be effective may not achieve its intended purpose.
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