Former office48 (part of the AKS group) executive Takashi Nodera has been arrested and imprisoned for filming illicit naked videos of the young idols under his charge.
There has been total silence on this so far in the mainstream media, as well as, needless to say, from the powers that be at AKS, the company that runs the juggernaut that is AKB48.
But the tabloids have fortunately broken the story.
Takashi Nodera hid secret cameras in bathrooms, dressing rooms and hotel rooms between 2009 and 2010 to film the girls, possibly under age, while they relaxed without clothes on.
Tokyo Reporter has translated some of the Shukan Bunshun article:
In one 58-minute clip shot in 2010, an AKB48 member is seen lounging fully naked on a bed in a hotel room. Footage taken on New Year’s Eve in 2009 shows members inside a dressing room for NHK’s “Kohaku Uta Gassen” prior to and during the celebratory countdown.
The married Nodera (38) was a board member of office48 from 2007 to 2010. His connections with AKB48 go back as far as 2005. We can only presume that he lost his job because his activities were discovered by AKS and they tried to cover it up. Of course, we don’t know for sure.
He was arrested and sentenced in 2013 to a 16-month prison sentence.
Police found 75 films totalling 15 hours in length of tousatsu footage (peeping videos) on the hard disk of his personal computer. Police also discovered more than 200 still images.
Can we please have it officially recognised at long last? AKB is sleazy. We have nothing against idol culture, but this is a machine designed to milk money from fans and groom girls for much older man to exploit.
It’s an open secret that Mariko Shinoda and Tomomi Kasai are/were probably having affairs with a top executive at AKS (namely Yasushi Kubota).
Meanwhile Tomonobu Togasaki has been caught using prostitutes and drugs.
And let’s not even get started on the allegations of Yakuza connections.
We’re not getting on any moral high horse here. We just don’t want these guys in charge of underage idols and certainly don’t want their coffers to benefit from the government’s obsessions with AKB48 being “Cool Japan”.
