The biggest entertainment world scandal in Japan of late has been the allegations of past sexual assault made against one of the nation’s most famous comedians, Hitoshi Matsumoto.
The reports first emerged in a tabloid magazine in late December and have continued to unfold. At first, Matsumoto, his agency (Yoshimoto Kogyo), and broadcasters ignored or gave the report a minimal denial, and colleagues offered on-air support, but more revelations are still trickling out in further articles, and 60-year-old Matsumoto has now withdrawn from his television commitments, nominally so he can pursue a lawsuit against the Weekly Bunshun that made the original allegations.
Now the plot has thickened with a veteran porn star coming out publicly in support of the allegations, in which two women accused Matsumoto and others of sexually abusing them in a Tokyo hotel room in 2015.
Mirei Kyono (京野美麗) is an adult video performer attached to LINX. She made her debut in 2014 as a jukujo performer for Madonna.
Kyono wrote on Twitter/X that was also once the victim of sexual assault by Matsumoto, though she makes it clear it was long ago and past the statute of limitations. She said she wants to help with any subsequent lawsuit that the comedian brings against his accusers.
Now aged 50, Kyono has also been involved in promoting fair compensation for performers whose work is distributed and sold in a secondary format (i.e., when AV productions are edited into omnibus and other such secondary releases). Often these practices were one of the ways in which the industry squeezed content out of performers, even after they had officially retired. Saki Otsuka once sued a company over a similar issue.
Nothing about the allegations against Matsumoto surprises us, unfortunately, and the model Marie made a similar accusation about another one-time major comedian in 2021.
Japan hasn’t had the same level of #MeToo reckoning that other countries have. While it is an open secret that sexual harassment and the casting couch are rampant in various parts of the entertainment industry, from fashion models to music idols, gravure idols, voice actors, and more, only a small handful of cases have emerged, such as film directors Sion Sono and Hideo Sakaki, the actor Houka Kinoshita, and photographer Nobuyoshi Araki.
Last year’s high-profile downfall of Johnny’s, the industry grandee in terms of entertainment agencies, was decades in the making and, in a sadly all too familiar pattern, required “outside pressure” (gaiatsu) in the form of a BBC documentary.
