Bravo is being sued.
03.10.2023 - 11:55 / deadline.com
Powerhouse Japanese boyband agency Johnny & Associates, which is embroiled in a sexual abuse scandal relating to its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, has announced it will change its name and split into two companies. In September, the pop giant acknowledged that Kitagawa, who died in 2019 at age 87, had sexually abused boys signed by the agency over a span of several decades.
At a press conference in Tokyo on Monday, it was revealed that an external committee for victim relief set up by the agency had received reports from 478 people, 325 of whom are seeking compensation. The agency, which is rebranding as Smile-Up to solely focus on identifying and compensating victims, said it would begin payments in November, local media reports.
That Tokyo-based company will eventually be dissolved, but its performers can join an as-yet unnamed independent company that is being set up to manage talent.
“All things with the Johnny’s name will have to go,” Noriyuki Higashiyama, the company’s new leader and a former client at the agency said on Monday, per the AP. “A wounded heart isn’t easy to heal. Compensation on its own will never be enough.” Higashiyama is a TV star and singer in Japan who has also been accused of sexual misconduct – allegations he denied on Monday, the BBC reported.
Kitagawa was never charged over any of the accusations. In late August, an investigation team found that he began sexually abusing boys in the 1950s, the Japan Times reported.
Rumors of his actions were rampant throughout the years, but gained renewed attention when the BBC aired a documentary about Kitagawa earlier this year. Over the summer, the U.N. Working Group on Business and Human Rights said the allegations involved several hundreds of the
Bravo is being sued.
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compensating the victims of sexual abuse by the company’s founder Johnny Kitagawa, who passed away in 2019. The other entity will continue to work with upcoming artists.The agency will be operating under a new name as an apparent way to disassociate itself from its disgraced founder.
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Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Johnny & Associates talent agency in Japan is to dissolve following scandal caused by the acts of sexual abuse conducted by the group’s late founder Johnny Kitagawa. The company announced on Monday that it will break itself into two parts – one to be called Smile-Up, entirely devoted to compensating victims – the other as a talent agency operating with a new name, that has yet to be decided. The group began to take action last month following two damning investigations that found that Kitagawa’s abuse had been hugely extensive and continued for years and that the company and Japanese media had ignored, if not covered it up. On Monday it said that some 325 victims had come forward to claim compensation. In a statement by Fujishima read out in her absence, the former chief executive, who owns 100% of the agency, said it was her duty as Kitagawa’s kin to put an end to Johnny & Associates. “I want to remove all traces of Johnny Kitagawa from this world,” her statement said.
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