[TW: SA] Former Johnny's Jr. Kauan Okamoto reveals he was repeatedly abused at 15 by Johnny Kitagawa, alleges 100-200 teens were similarity victimized at Kitagawa’s penthouse while he was a member

Makes me sick to my stomach.

It's crazy to hear his perspective. Him saying that some people actually WANTED to be invited to Johnny's penthouse. They WANTED to be a favorite. He may be speaking from his own perspective and projecting on others, but for him to say some of them laughed about it...

They were basically young ignorant children who were selling themselves to an old man for a dream. He's saying his parents didn't know, but he was a 15 year old boy spending the night at a known predator's house...often. They knew. They just didn't care.

This reminds me of this girl who was on the NiziU project, and she was one of the few people who got selected to go train in Korea from Japan. She ended up quitting the show because her parents forced her to. They didn't want her in the entertainment industry. Not saying that what was happening at Johnny's was happening at JYPE, but any loving parent who knew about the open secret of Johnny's wouldn't want their kids in that business.

And the fact this was a known thing and NO one in Japan gave a fuck. Johnny definitely was not the only predator. Honestly, I cannot imagine knowing what was going on at Johnny's and STILL being able to support the group. Every time I saw my bias, I'd think of him being raped or having sex with old man Johnny. I couldn't take it.

If something like this ever comes out from a big KPOP agency, and not just rumors, but actual victims coming out to speak, I'm dropping it.

Quote from keyboardwarrior7

Makes me sick to my stomach.

It's crazy to hear his perspective. Him saying that some people actually WANTED to be invited to Johnny's penthouse. They WANTED to be a favorite. He may be speaking from his own perspective and projecting on others, but for him to say some of them laughed about it...

They were basically young ignorant children who were selling themselves to an old man for a dream. He's saying his parents didn't know, but he was a 15 year old boy spending the night at a known predator's house...often. They knew. They just didn't care.

Johnny's was allways weird.

And it made me sick to know that this man even existed.

As he passed away and Jin Akanishi made a song for him, everyone was just confused and weirdet out by what Jin sung about. The song was in English so even international fans just got weirdet out.

The artists who later on were shown on TV or in press conferences were crying and people were unsure if they cried happy tears to be free from Johnny or if they cried cause they liked him and are sad that he died.

And I also remember a interview that was held with a former trainee who was 16 back than. The people who had interviewed the boy asked if he knew about everything and the boy randomly only said "Maybe he was just gay" wtf

I have been listening to JPOP since the 80’s and was a big fan of SMAP and Kat-tun too but as soon as I found out re the Kitagawa sex abuse around 2006, I avoided Johnny groups 100%. I remember fully Akanishi’s coded song and it was def about abuse.

I don’t blame the groups but I couldn’t give money or support a company that continues to abuse youths who were chasing their dreams. I also fully disagree with anyone that tries to say the boys knew so it is OK. Nope!

It is commercial sexual exploitation in every which way and it is never the youth’s fault when there is a huge power imbalance and the abusers are all adults that set up the abusive system.

One aspect of Japanese society that really upset me is the turning the blind eye to sexual violence (in so many forms too) and I say this as someone who has lived in Japan and have worked activist trying to work on this issue. They are up against a wall of corrupt politicians/men/women who benefit directly or indirectly and so it goes no where at the expense of the children, youths, and all victims.

I am glad the victim is speaking up and yes, he isn’t the first to say all this and I hope he will be okay because we know the company will try to silence and harass him to stop. Brave guy and wish him all the best.

Quote from keyboardwarrior7

It's crazy to hear his perspective. Him saying that some people actually WANTED to be invited to Johnny's penthouse. They WANTED to be a favorite. He may be speaking from his own perspective and projecting on others, but for him to say some of them laughed about it...

We have known about this for decades allegations against Johnny started as early as the 1980s. What he says about being wanted is very true, especially since Johnny was basically God like. I'll give you an example for kpop as people aren't always familiar with jpop. Keep in mind everything you see including BTS literally was created by Johnny, the entire idol system, how fansigns are done high touches vlive and how the agency is often the talent scout,trainer, music label and distributor came from here

Every agency in kpop follows this same blueprint including gathering trainnes at young ages.

Johnny was godlike because everything was owned by him or his company, this would be like hybe owning everything tv station radio station and recording studio, they'd have the power to dictate everything. This happened with Johnny, he had a full monopoly on the entertainment industry, most other agencies played second fiddle to JE, JE idols were given roles in movies and dramas even they didn't know how to act and weren't actors they got priority over real actors. They got priority over all other idols for tv shows like vareity shows, and music shows

Like awards shows etc they were first. They were first on air time for basically anything same for radio play. With nearly limitless power and the fact an agency like this, just like modern kpop how everything is insulated and isolated everything is done in house away from the prying eyes of the public, this left the potential for abuse to go unchecked because there's virtually no way for police or some oversight committee to look into a closed off place without some evidence shit is going down. With his and the company level of influence and power hardly anyone would come out because he could have you shadow blacklisted and you could never become a celebrity, keep in mind Je is popular world wide, they are all over Asia and hires trainnes from all over the world hmm sounds like modern kpop right. They have offices in Taiwan, Vietnam had one in Korea and have an office in LA California. We have known about this abuse for decades but lacked any concrete proof or smoking guns to actually nail anything down, plus with how je could ruin your idol career meant none of his people be it adults when they first got abused or younger would never testify against him even anonymously because visiting Johnny privately was a checkmate he knew each instance down to the minute detail so even if someone reported anonymous he would figure out who it was. Add on the fact that many believed Johnny power could get criminal element involved really made people think he could actually kill you and get away with it so he had quite a few deterrence to people talking.

As for kpop having something like this potentially brewing? It's possible like i said every aspect of kpop came from Johnny's blueprint literally everything, from hiring forgieners to ghost write, and choreograph dances, the hiring of hundreds of black artists for the hip hop/rap and clothing theme etc all of it all came from here first. It never got all the ca and woke attention because jpop kept itself rather closed and didn't care what people thought so it went under the radar forever and still is

Quote from kazuyakamenashi

Johnny was godlike because everything was owned by him or his company, this would be like hybe owning everything tv station radio station and recording studio, they'd have the power to dictate everything. This happened with Johnny, he had a full monopoly on the entertainment industry, most other agencies played second fiddle to JE, JE idols were given roles in movies and dramas even they didn't know how to act and weren't actors they got priority over real actors. They got priority over all other idols for tv shows like vareity shows, and music shows

And thats why most other companies in Japan first tried to debut more girlgroups, soloist, bands and duos since they had hard times to reach the same sucess than Johnny's-acts. Some companies tried to still do it as for example when in the year 2000 W-inds. was scouted trought Japan's first ever survival show. And companies like Avex where super popular for their acts like Ayumi Hamasaki, Namie Amuro, Every Litle Thing,... but most companies never even dared to touch the subject of debuting a boygroup. It changed a bit when in 2001 EXILE debuted, but their company feared to get a backlash by Johnny's for doing the same thing and so the group debuted with members who are just dancers and said they would be totaly different. It worked for them since their early releases sold sometimes over 1 million times. Companies like Avex did the same with some of their boygroups as like for example Da-iCE and when Stardust/EBiDAN debuted their first group who was called PRIZMAX they also did the same concept of singers with dancers. Only in the past couple of years there are more boygroups where all member sing/rap and even LDH went there too now since their 3 latest boygroups are all singer/raper without any members who just dance.

It was mainly a thing back than to not have groups with just vocalists/rapper since many people just feared the word "idol" would hurt them cause Johnny's was acting up as like as if they would own this word and would give nobody else permitions to use it. This however only applied to boygroups since the girlgroup scene was allready flooded with a lot girlgroups after more and more girls wanted to be like Morning Musume who is one of the first ever existing GGs that got extremly popular in Japan.

The idol scene btw is now a bit more changed and super diverse now and people don't feel threatened by Johnny's anymore, but it still sucks for rookies when they debut at similiar times than a Johnny's act. One example would be when BE:FIRST and INI debuted on the same day in 2021 and Johnny's debuted the group Naniwa Danshi less than a week later, but however BE:FIRST and INI are still very stable in Japan since now things have changed. And cause as it seems like the only good promo Johnny's does for Naniwa Danshi is pushing Shunusuke Miechida (since this boy is cute and therefore popular by a lot younger girls who than want to watch the dramas hes acting in, also Johnny's was pushing him too hard with fan-service like photos where he and Ren of Snow Man apear on just cause they were in a drama together)

keyboardwarrior7 just tagging you so you also see this post in case you may be interested

Quote from JiminieKookie

And thats why most other companies in Japan first tried to debut more girlgroups, soloist, bands and duos since they had hard times to reach the same sucess than Johnny's-acts. Some companies tried to still do it as for example when in the year 2000 W-inds. was scouted trought Japan's first ever survival show. And companies like Avex where super popular for their acts like Ayumi Hamasaki, Namie Amuro, Every Litle Thing,... but most companies never even dared to touch the subject of debuting a boygroup. It changed a bit when in 2001 EXILE debuted, but their company feared to get a backlash by Johnny's for doing the same thing and so the group debuted with members who are just dancers and said they would be totaly different. It worked for them since their early releases sold sometimes over 1 million times. Companies like Avex did the same with some of their boygroups as like for example Da-iCE and when Stardust/EBiDAN debuted their first group who was called PRIZMAX they also did the same concept of singers with dancers. Only in the past couple of years there are more boygroups where all member sing/rap and even LDH went there too now since their 3 latest boygroups are all singer/raper without any members who just dance.

It was mainly a thing back than to not have groups with just vocalists/rapper since many people just feared the word "idol" would hurt them cause Johnny's was acting up as like as if they would own this word and would give nobody else permitions to use it. This however only applied to boygroups since the girlgroup scene was allready flooded with a lot girlgroups after more and more girls wanted to be like Morning Musume who is one of the first ever existing GGs that got extremly popular in Japan.

The idol scene btw is now a bit more changed and super diverse now and people don't feel threatened by Johnny's anymore, but it still sucks for rookies when they debut at similiar times than a Johnny's act. One example would be when BE:FIRST and INI debuted on the same day in 2021 and Johnny's debuted the group Naniwa Danshi less than a week later, but however BE:FIRST and INI are still very stable in Japan since now things have changed. And cause as it seems like the only good promo Johnny's does for Naniwa Danshi is pushing Shunusuke Miechida (since this boy is cute and therefore popular by a lot younger girls who than want to watch the dramas hes acting in, also Johnny's was pushing him too hard with fan-service like photos where he and Ren of Snow Man apear on just cause they were in a drama together)

keyboardwarrior7 just tagging you so you also see this post in case you may be interested

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Very true Johnny dominated the bg scene and held a monopoly, the reason people felt comfortable later on is JE power started to wane plus the rise of kpop etc brought healthy competition for them to loosen up abit. After Johnny died? Everyone is wilding. The sad part about this situation is Okamoto would never have come forward if Johnny was still around. The possibility that the person can come get you is a reason people don't talk. But knowing he's dead and he can't come hurt you makes it easier for them to speak. As someone else mentioned wondering if this happened in kpop? We won't know until all the founders of kpop have died you'd need yg jyp bang pd lsm the ceo of hook and that ceo from omega x company to die off for anyone to come forward if something happened ( bang is there not because he's "bad" but because like Johnny the man has too much power)

Quote from kazuyakamenashi

As someone else mentioned wondering if this happened in kpop? We won't know until all the founders of kpop have died you'd need yg jyp bang pd lsm the ceo of hook and that ceo from omega x company to die off for anyone to come forward if something happened

Not a big company but there were allready some smaller companies who fucked up hard time and got closed down. Most cases were not sexual abuse but misstreating the artist. The only time a company closed down due to sexual harasment was when the boys of a band called The East Light ran away from their company after their CEO tried to sexualy abuse them

Quote from JiminieKookie

Not a big company but there were allready some smaller companies who fucked up hard time and got closed down. Most cases were not sexual abuse but misstreating the artist. The only time a company closed down due to sexual harasment was when the boys of a band called The East Light ran away from their company after their CEO tried to sexualy abuse them

Same happened with Omega x but the criminal cases have yet to get started the civil case has already been won

Quote from kazuyakamenashi

We have known about this for decades allegations against Johnny started as early as the 1980s. What he says about being wanted is very true, especially since Johnny was basically God like. I'll give you an example for kpop as people aren't always familiar with jpop. Keep in mind everything you see including BTS literally was created by Johnny, the entire idol system, how fansigns are done high touches vlive and how the agency is often the talent scout,trainer, music label and distributor came from here

Every agency in kpop follows this same blueprint including gathering trainnes at young ages.

Johnny was godlike because everything was owned by him or his company, this would be like hybe owning everything tv station radio station and recording studio, they'd have the power to dictate everything. This happened with Johnny, he had a full monopoly on the entertainment industry, most other agencies played second fiddle to JE, JE idols were given roles in movies and dramas even they didn't know how to act and weren't actors they got priority over real actors. They got priority over all other idols for tv shows like vareity shows, and music shows

Like awards shows etc they were first. They were first on air time for basically anything same for radio play. With nearly limitless power and the fact an agency like this, just like modern kpop how everything is insulated and isolated everything is done in house away from the prying eyes of the public, this left the potential for abuse to go unchecked because there's virtually no way for police or some oversight committee to look into a closed off place without some evidence shit is going down. With his and the company level of influence and power hardly anyone would come out because he could have you shadow blacklisted and you could never become a celebrity, keep in mind Je is popular world wide, they are all over Asia and hires trainnes from all over the world hmm sounds like modern kpop right. They have offices in Taiwan, Vietnam had one in Korea and have an office in LA California. We have known about this abuse for decades but lacked any concrete proof or smoking guns to actually nail anything down, plus with how je could ruin your idol career meant none of his people be it adults when they first got abused or younger would never testify against him even anonymously because visiting Johnny privately was a checkmate he knew each instance down to the minute detail so even if someone reported anonymous he would figure out who it was. Add on the fact that many believed Johnny power could get criminal element involved really made people think he could actually kill you and get away with it so he had quite a few deterrence to people talking.

As for kpop having something like this potentially brewing? It's possible like i said every aspect of kpop came from Johnny's blueprint literally everything, from hiring forgieners to ghost write, and choreograph dances, the hiring of hundreds of black artists for the hip hop/rap and clothing theme etc all of it all came from here first. It never got all the ca and woke attention because jpop kept itself rather closed and didn't care what people thought so it went under the radar forever and still is

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Quote from JiminieKookie

And thats why most other companies in Japan first tried to debut more girlgroups, soloist, bands and duos since they had hard times to reach the same sucess than Johnny's-acts. Some companies tried to still do it as for example when in the year 2000 W-inds. was scouted trought Japan's first ever survival show. And companies like Avex where super popular for their acts like Ayumi Hamasaki, Namie Amuro, Every Litle Thing,... but most companies never even dared to touch the subject of debuting a boygroup. It changed a bit when in 2001 EXILE debuted, but their company feared to get a backlash by Johnny's for doing the same thing and so the group debuted with members who are just dancers and said they would be totaly different. It worked for them since their early releases sold sometimes over 1 million times. Companies like Avex did the same with some of their boygroups as like for example Da-iCE and when Stardust/EBiDAN debuted their first group who was called PRIZMAX they also did the same concept of singers with dancers. Only in the past couple of years there are more boygroups where all member sing/rap and even LDH went there too now since their 3 latest boygroups are all singer/raper without any members who just dance.

It was mainly a thing back than to not have groups with just vocalists/rapper since many people just feared the word "idol" would hurt them cause Johnny's was acting up as like as if they would own this word and would give nobody else permitions to use it. This however only applied to boygroups since the girlgroup scene was allready flooded with a lot girlgroups after more and more girls wanted to be like Morning Musume who is one of the first ever existing GGs that got extremly popular in Japan.

The idol scene btw is now a bit more changed and super diverse now and people don't feel threatened by Johnny's anymore, but it still sucks for rookies when they debut at similiar times than a Johnny's act. One example would be when BE:FIRST and INI debuted on the same day in 2021 and Johnny's debuted the group Naniwa Danshi less than a week later, but however BE:FIRST and INI are still very stable in Japan since now things have changed. And cause as it seems like the only good promo Johnny's does for Naniwa Danshi is pushing Shunusuke Miechida (since this boy is cute and therefore popular by a lot younger girls who than want to watch the dramas hes acting in, also Johnny's was pushing him too hard with fan-service like photos where he and Ren of Snow Man apear on just cause they were in a drama together)

keyboardwarrior7 just tagging you so you also see this post in case you may be interested

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Thank you both for the context.

I guess I have just never wanted anything enough to sell myself like that.

I hope that now that Johnny is gone, no more guys have to go through that repeated abuse. And, I hope that those things are not happening in KPOP. KPOP is a dirty industry just like any other industry, so I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if this does come out in the future. But, it will make me said nonetheless.

Quote from keyboardwarrior7

I guess I have just never wanted anything enough to sell myself like that

All you have to do to get a glimpse in those shoes is think of something that you want that badly or believe you couldn't live without under any circumstances and you will get an idea how someone can fall into or unfortunately willing accept abuse for what they desire. People like Johnny just found what are you willing to give/compromise for. Most people have a limit, like this situation could have been im willing to accept touching as long as x is given or more graphic stuff as long you don't go over the limit and break them then you can't make money off a mentally unstable or broken suicidal person. You make deals with them upto their accepted limit and you just profit $$$ like the sick monster you are.

Quote from kazuyakamenashi

All you have to do to get a glimpse in those shoes is think of something that you want that badly or believe you couldn't live without under any circumstances and you will get an idea how someone can fall into or unfortunately willing accept abuse for what they desire. People like Johnny just found what are you willing to give/compromise for. Most people have a limit, like this situation could have been im willing to accept touching as long as x is given or more graphic stuff as long you don't go over the limit and break them then you can't make money off a mentally unstable or broken suicidal person. You make deals with them upto their accepted limit and you just profit $$$ like the sick monster you are.

I have something I want badly, but there is nothing like that that I cannot live without. To me, my dignity and self respect mean more. So, in that way, I can't relate.

Quote from keyboardwarrior7

I have something I want badly, but there is nothing like that that I cannot live without. To me, my dignity and self respect mean more. So, in that way, I can't relate.

You are lucky be very grateful for this mindset and outlook on life because unfortunately not many people possess this. Which allows situations like this to happen without force being used