This week came the news that Nana Okada would graduate AKB48 after she was found to have — shock horror! — a boyfriend (actor Hiroki Ino).
The supergroup’s numbers of music idols are vast and most disappear without a trace. While it’s well known that some work in porn after graduating, a luckier few go on to forge careers as models, actors, or tarento (talents) — general dogsbody celebrities.
Nishino seems to fall into the latter. Since leave AKB48 in 2017, she has continued to appear sporadically on TV, such as one show in which she flaunted her cute but out-of-shape body (in contrast to the athletic, svelte figure of Kazusa Okuyama).
Now, it seems that she has found the right guy to settle down with and it’s a fellow celebrity. So far, so typical.
But people were nonetheless shocked when Nishino announced on November 22 that had married the comedian Keiichi Yamamoto, of the comedy duo Gokuraku Tombo.
Nishino is 23 and Yamamoto is 54 — older than her parents!
In addition to the 31-year age gap, which many find pretty creepy, some with longer memories than the mainstream media have pointed out that Yamamoto has a shady past when it comes to younger women. He has apparently faced serious allegations in the past of sexual assault against an underage girl in 2006. Though she wasn’t charged, the scandal led to him losing his prestigious contract with the entertainment giant Yoshimoto. He spent several years in the professional wilderness before he returned to mainstream comedy in the mid-2010s.
Examples of younger celebrities, especially idols and singers, marrying much-older male celebrities are plenty. In 2021, Robin Shoko Okada (28) married Koichi Yamadera (59), an actor who was previously married to sexy voice actress Rie Tanaka. In 2019, the singer Shigeru Joshima of Tokio married a gravure idol half his age.
