Japan music mogul Johnny Kitagawa ‘performed sex acts on me when I was 15’, ex-teen idol says

Japanese-Brazilian singer Kauan Okamoto, 26, is one of the first people to publicly address Johnny Kitagawa’s long-alleged history of sexual abuse against young boys

Allegations of child abuse and sexual exploitation surrounded Kitagawa for years, but accusers have mostly remained anonymous

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Japanese-Brazilian singer Okamoto said he was molested by Kitagawa “15 to 20” times during his four-year stint in the agency until 2016, starting when he was just 15 years old. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:00am, 13 Apr 2023Updated: 1:17am, 13 Apr 2023

A former teen idol on Wednesday said he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by Johnny Kitagawa, the founder of Japan’s biggest boy band empire, in a rare public allegation against the late mogul.

The talent agency Johnny and Associates, which was established by Kitagawa and has dominated the country’s showbiz industry for decades, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, which hosted a press conference by the accuser, Kauan Okamoto, said the company also failed to respond to its invitations to comment.

Kitagawa died of a stroke aged 87 in 2019, having engineered the birth of J-pop mega-groups including SMAP, TOKIO and Arashi, who amassed adoring fans across Asia.

A pop-up store in Shanghai that sells goods related to Japanese boy band Arashi’s documentary film on their concert tour in 2018 and 2019. Photo: Kyodo

His young recruits were known collectively as “Johnny’s Jrs”, and flocked to Kitagawa in the hopes of making it big in the lucrative J-pop industry.

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