Now that the cat is way out of the bag, Japanese mainstream media are finally covering the Johnny Kitagawa sexual abuse story in all its lurid detail, even though it has been an open secret for decades. I talked about some of the reasons for the hands-off attitude in a recent editorial in The Japan Times, but in a nutshell, Japanese media companies have complex business associations with subsidiaries that often dealt with Johnny & Associates, Kitagawa’s all-powerful male talent agency, and these subsidiaries were loath to upset the old man. Now that he’s dead going on four years and the BBC bust the whole story wide open by interviewing Johnny’s idols who had been systematically and serially molested by Kitagawa, there’s nothing left to hide, and for the most part major news outlets are admitting that they didn’t fulfill their responsibility as pillars of journalism by ignoring the claims in the past. Recently on the web talk show Democracy Times, former Aera editor Keiko Hamada confessed that while she was aware of the reports about Kitagawa’s crimes she paid no attention because Aera often ran portraits of Johnny’s idols on her magazines’ covers, and they always boosted sales considerably. 

An iron grip on portrait rights, or permission to print or post images of Johnny’s charges, has always been one of the agency’s main means of keeping the media in line, and still seems to be if you run a search of past Aera covers on the web. Any that featured a Johnny’s star is replaced with a grey silhouette. The exception is Takuya Kimura, arguably Johnny’s biggest solo star as a former member of SMAP. Kimura makes his career as an actor these days, and while he is still represented by Johnny’s, he seems to have some independence. He may have more personal discretion over granting portrait rights to involved endeavors, so the Aera cover that was used to promote his latest film, The Legend and Butterfly, could be accessed on the net without any retouching.

And elsewhere. Though Johnny’s itself has come out and apologized (with caveats) for Kitagawa’s transgressions, not all news outlets have covered the story in full. Perhaps the most notable example is the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, which would normally be all over anything reeking of scandal in the show business world. Why the publication has avoided the ruckus isn’t clear. Most likely Shincho—or its publisher, Shinchosha—is keeping its options open. Though Johnny & Associates may have egg on its face, it is still a powerful player in the media world. Its idols remain extremely popular and Shinchosha probably hopes that when the dust settles it can take advantage of whatever favors it has curried with Johnny’s by avoiding the whole sorry business. 

One of the best examples of this mutual back-scratching concept is the publication of calendars, which, according to an article that appeared on the website of the magazine Cyzo in December 2020, publishers think of as “vested interests.” As it happens, Shinchosha published the official 2022 calendar of the Johnny’s group Naniwa Danshi, which was big news in the media world at the time because Naniwa Danshi was making its calendar debut, so Shinchosha’s selection was something of a coup. 

“Selection” is the operative word here. Cyzo says Johnny’s-associated calendars are important to publishers because they are guaranteed money-makers. Each one negotiates with the agency to handle one of Johnny’s acts in a given year, and Johnny’s carefully allots one group to one publisher in an elaborate carrot-and-stick scheme that maintains its interests throughout the industry. Publishers who are granted permission to print and sell calendars with exclusive photos of a Johnny’s act are expected to toe the line with regard to reporting on Johnny’s activities, especially scandals that may befall their charges. Likewise, publications that have fallen out of favor with Johnny’s due to such reporting can get back in the agency’s good graces by dangling in front of them the possibility of a calendar contract, which Johnny’s trusts will keep these publications in line in the future. 

As an example of this practice, Cyzo cites the publishing house Shufu to Seikatsu-sha and its “women’s weekly” Shukan Josei, which ran afoul some years back of Johnny’s when it ran an article about a scandal that touched one of Johnny’s acts. The publisher and its associates were shut out of Johnny’s resources for a time, but gradually the ban was lifted as Johnny’s offered a calendar contract, and sure enough Shufu to Seikatsu-sha landed the deal for the group Johnny’s West. 

However, Cyzo also noted that during the time Shukan Josei was “banned” from Johnny’s mailing list it published lots of Johnny’s-related scandal stories that boosted sales of the magazine itself. A source within the industry told Cyzo that when Johnny’s eventually lifted the embargo against Shufu to Seikatsu-sha “the relationship improved greatly” but that didn’t necessarily translate as an increase in sontaku (unsolicited consideration) on the part of the publisher; meaning that while the coverage of Johnny’s-related stories may have been “milder,” it wasn’t always to Johnny’s advantage, especially when compared to other women’s weeklies, which tended to suck up to Johnny’s. Cyzo wondered if that meant Johnny’s influence was waning (this was before BBC’s documentary), but another insider commented that this qualified dispensation was actually the result of problems within the agency in the management of Johnny’s West, whose popularity had been dropping for years. In other words, granting portrait rights to a problematic publisher like Shufu to Seikatsu-sha was more or less a desperate move. Even Johnny’s will occasionally ask for favors, even from nominal nemeses.

But the crux of the matter is Johnny’s hold on portrait rights. The calendars are big business because no one is allowed to publish or post images of Johnny’s acts, thus making the exclusive calendars that much more valuable. It’s important to note that Johnny’s calendars follow the fiscal year—from April to March, rather than from January to December. Orders for calendars for the following year start at midnight December 1, with orders becoming available for pickup on March 4. And while publishers don’t reveal sales figures for Johnny’s calendars, Shukan Bunshun, the eternal thorn in Johnny’s side, last year reported that the top seller for 2021 was the calendar for Snow Man, printed by Shogakukan, which also publishes the women’s weekly Josei Seven and the scandal weekly Shukan Post. Pre-sale orders for Snow Man’s calendar exceeded 200,000 copies, which Bunshun called exceptionally high, owing probably to the pandemic, since fans of the group couldn’t see their heroes perform in person. However, in February 2022, the buzz was that, while orders for other Johnny’s calendars had leveled off with the end of COVID, Snow Man’s had increased even more, and might even top 300,000. How much is that in sales? The Snow Man calendar cost ¥2,600, so 300,000 copies means gross revenues of ¥780,000,000. How that’s spilt between Johhny’s and Shogakukan is anybody’s guess, but you can bet it’s a core negotiating point.