This is a story that’s been bubbling along in the background for a while and has now come more fully to light.
Mariko Shinoda, the celebrity once one of the big original stars of AKB48, is locked in a legal battle with her estranged husband over the custody rights to their child.
Shinoda graduated AKB48 in 2013 and got married in autumn 2019 to a man she had been dating for just a few months. In April 2020, she gave birth. She became something of a model of motherhood, devoting her Instagram to pictures of her parenting. This all seemed to stop in summer this year amid a tranche of rumors.
In September came reports that 36-year-old Shinoda and her husband had separated, and that he had left with their daughter and was denying her visitation rights. She was apparently hysterical and suicidal. The situation then changed and they currently share custody of their child.
In December, the husband sued Shinoda for adultery. This is common practice in Japan, where the aggrieved spouse can sue their ex and/or their partner. Her husband had allegedly found a kind of diary app where Shinoda had recorded the dates when she had sex with her husband and those when she had sex with her lover.
Many of these details are now coming to light because of the court case, though online rumors and tabloid reports have trickled out for some time.
One of the final, more bizarre twists in this strange tale comes courtesy of the LINE screenshots that are now surfacing. These ostensibly show conversations on the app between Shinoda and her lover (said to be a successful entrepreneur), but also exchanges between Shinoda and Yasushi Kubota.
Readers may remember him as the former AKB48 president who it was alleged that one-time member of the supergroup Tomomi Kasai was having an affair with.
Now Kubota is apparently, according to the screenshots, involved with what is essentially an escort and massage service for women called Roppongi Secret Base, whose services are supposedly popular with former AKB48 idols like Rino Sashihara. It is not clear if Shinoda was making use of this service.
Kubota and Shinoda were accused by the tabloid magazine Weekly Bunshun of having an affair way back in 2010, which led AKB48’s management company, AKS, to sue the publication. In 2013, the magazine followed up with a scoop: a picture of Tomomi Kasai and Kubota in the street, allegedly before they spent the night at his home. Later that year, Kasai graduated from AKB48 (though her career then floundered due to a controversial, ultimately cancelled photo book just before). Shinoda also graduated a few months after. In September, AKS won its lawsuit against Bunshun over its allegations, though was awarded only nominal damages. It seems that the magazine has had the last laugh.
