Star TV host retires as sex scandal rocks Japan industry

A)
1)
Japanese TV host Masahiro Nakai, one of the country's most recognisable faces on television, has announced that he is retiring after a sexual assault allegation that has rocked the country's entertainment industry.

Nakai, who presented for Fuji Television, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a 2023 dinner party held by staff.

2)
Dozens of companies have pulled their commercials from Fuji Television amid claims that the company's staff had tried to cover up the scandal.

Nakai has denied using violence against the woman, and said on 9 January that he had "resolved" the matter with her through a settlement. But this did little to quell public anger.

B)
3)
In a social media statement posted on Thursday, Nakai said that he was "truly sorry for causing trouble and losses to so many people".

"I'm really, really sorry for saying good-bye this way."

4)
His resignation comes days after Fuji Television president Koichi Minato confirmed that the company did not disclose Nakai's scandal despite being aware of it long before it was reported in the media.

5)
Vehicle makers Nissan and Toyota, as well as retail company Seven & I holdings which runs the retail 7-eleven convenience store chain, were among those that announced they were pulling advertising from Fuji Television over the scandal.

6)
Fuji Television is expected to set up an independent committee to investigate the scandal.

Appearances of Nakai have also been scrubbed from programmes.

7)
Nakai soared to stardom in the 1990s as the leader of Japanese boy band SMAP, one of Asia's most successful acts. The group released more than 50 singles - many of which became chart toppers - and launched a weekly variety show on prime-time television.

C)
8)
After SMAP disbanded in 2016, Nakai went on to become a television host as well as one of the wealthiest celebrities in Japan.

Japan's entertainment industry is facing a reckoning with long unspoken cases of sexual assault.

9)
In 2023, J-pop executive Johnny Kitagawa, who by then had been dead for four years, was exposed to have sexually abused hundreds of boys and young men for decades.

His talent agency, Johnny & Associates, had managed SMAP among other boy bands.

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The "Masahiro Nakai / Fuji TV issue" was bound to happen... Why are human rights not protected in Japan? "The harsh reality"

https://gendai.media/articles/-/145815?imp=0

Why can't we protect "human rights"?

I think that the response to the recent case of Johnny & Associates sexually exploiting people involved for many years was too lenient. Protecting "human rights" includes respecting the property of individuals in addition to their lives. In a sense, the right to use one's body for sexual purposes (or hard labour) is the property of the individual.

Nevertheless, Japanese culture is very tolerant of organizations and direct superiors claiming and abusing the right to arbitrarily use the property of those "below." However, this needs to change, and all Japanese people need to create a culture in which all people's fundamental human rights are truly respected.

However, this is a task that will remain for a long time.

This is mainly due to the influence of the Imperial Rescript on Education, which was widely forced on the people before the war. The Imperial Rescript on Education positions people as something that should not be involved too much in discussions on abstract morality and ethics. They are taught that what is important is the emotions that arise in direct human relationships between parents and children, spouses, siblings, seniors and juniors, and the sense of obligation that comes with them. In some cases, aesthetic expressions are preferred over logical ones regarding morality.

Even today, the sentiment that "anything written with rigid reasoning is inferior" is widely accepted in Japan.

However, "basic human rights" are an abstract concept. This is because the modern Western world created them and began to assume the abstract existence of "human beings in general." Therefore, Japanese people do not think that fundamental human rights are essential or valuable.

As mentioned earlier, under the influence of the Imperial Rescript on Education, theoretical words and actions that dampen a group's mood are scorned and contemptuously in most groups, especially those with Japanese narcissism, before the merits of the content are considered.

Naturally, people who speak and act to point out problems in the system are assumed to have ethical and incompetent problems. In that case, they may be the subject of explicit criticism, attack, and exclusion, or even if they do not go that far, they may be treated unfavourably in the distribution of status and rewards.

As a result, group members will try to be as careful as possible not to stand out in a way that does not match the overall sentiment. It becomes difficult to choose words and actions that go against the atmosphere created by superiors, and it is difficult to suppress the exploitation of subordinates by superiors, as was discussed at the beginning. Naturally, self-assertion based on human rights awareness is considered immoral even if it is valid, and negotiation skills and rule-setting skills based on that foundation do not develop.

Frustration accumulates overall, but it becomes difficult to express dissatisfaction with superiors or the community. As Nakai has now found himself in that position, if a person becomes the target of an atmosphere where the whole community sees him as "bad," he is scrutinized, criticized, and intervened in. It becomes difficult to stop this from becoming excessive. Creating a scapegoat and venting oneself against it becomes a welcome pastime.

I think it was different when the traditions of Buddhism and Confucianism were still alive in Japan and when there was a strong will to seriously study democracy for a certain period after the war, a time when Japan demonstrated its cultural achievements as a world leader, and how to integrate expressions of such universal truths with the concrete practice of managing a group in front of us was sought.

However, when only the artificially created ideological atmosphere represented by the Imperial Rescript on Education was intense after the Meiji era, the only thing pursued was to foster a sense of unity. For example, this was effective during the modernization period after the Meiji Restoration and the period of economic development after the defeat in the war. Still, in an era when clear goals such as "war" and "economic growth" could not be set, it could not create a notarized ideal that would enable the stable management of the nation.

Amid this, Japan continued to experience stagnation in what has been called the lost 30 years after the period of rapid economic growth. This stagnation was primarily caused by Japanese people's actions and words that went beyond the range of mutual emotional understanding and by interactions among the Japanese that did not allow for individual self-assertion.

It is difficult for Japanese people to escape this mutual constraint and become independent social beings. There may be cases where they are forced to become isolated. However, suppose they remain confined to the logic of closed village society and cannot create organizations or groups based on assumptions that can be shared with people in other countries, such as fundamental human rights. In that case, they will be left behind by developments and changes worldwide, which will be significant long-term losses.