Inside Warner Bros. Discovery and Air Mail's Starry Cannes Party With Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorseseasked Kitano for his thoughts on the growing outcry during an interview Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival, where the director, actor and comedian is premiering his latest feature,“The time of being able to speak up about LGBTQ stuff and sexual harassment has finally come to Japan,” Kitano said. “But these stories have always been around [in our industry],” he added.
Throughout it all, Japan’s mainstream media maintained near-total silence — despite the fact that the allegations involved the company responsible for creating some of the country’s very biggest stars, including idol group mainstays like SMAP, Shonentai, Arashi and Travis Japan.
Several weeks after the airing of the BBC’s documentary in March, Kauan Okamoto, a former member of Johnny’s trainee program for aspiring pop idols, Johnny’s Jr., gave an interview withand a press conference at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan detailing further allegations against the deceased media magnate.
As outcry over the claims began to spread, a Johnny’s fan group in mid-May submitted a petition with over 16,000 signatures, demanding that the agency launch an internal investigation. Johnny’s current president and Kitagawa’s niece, Julie Keiko Fujishima, then took the unprecedented step of directly addressing the sexual abuse allegations on behalf of the company for the first time.