An influencer in Japan owes a company millions of dollars in damages over a collaboration deal that went south. A court agreed with the plaintiff in the case that the online star violated her contract when she got a boob job without their knowledge.
The controversy centers on 31-year-old model and YouTuber Tenchim (てんちむ), a.k.a. Hashimoto Tenka, who’s amassed a 1.69 million user following. Tenchim struck up a partnership to create a night bra in partnership with company Yuiku.
According to a lawyer who summarized the case on X, the product was a huge hit, raking in 3.7 billion yen (USD $24M). That might have been due to Tenchim’s claims that the bra had helped her breasts grow. But then it came out that Tenchim had been making these claims without divulging that she had received breast augmentation surgery.
The YouTuber went on a break and tried resolving the issue with the company, sending them an unspecified amount of money and asking them to refund buyers. However, according to Tenchim, the company didn’t seem keen on issuing refunds. (One user on X says they never got reimbursed after returning the product.)
Tenchim sued Yuiku to get a better accounting of how Yuiku was using its funds. The bra maker countersued her for 500 million yen ($3.25M) for breach of contract. This week, a Tokyo court ruled in the company’s favor, finding that Tenchim owed them 384M yen ($2.47M).
Tenchim’s made light of the verdict, apparently in a bid to garner fan sympathy. She changed her profile name on X to 圧倒的敗訴 (attouteki haiso, complete loss in court), and her description to “a.k.a. 圧倒的債務者” (attouteki saimusha, absolute debtor).
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“The court case?” she wrote in a tweet. “Take a guess.”
On a June 23rd broadcast on her channel, the entertainer mused that she might have to file personal bankruptcy if she lost her lawsuit. Shortly after that, she confessed that she’d had a real estate application rejected.
“Of course you can’t get approved if you talk brazenly about filing bankruptcy,” she bemoaned. “I’m an idiot.”
Tenchim is now indicating she’ll pay off the huge debt by…doing the same thing all over again. Shortly after the first version of this story went to press, she shared a tweet on X showing a number of bra designs in progress. “Paying bra debt with bras,” she wrote.
As for the company, Yuiku, its website is now nothing more than a statement that it won’t comment on the issue. Its Google Business listing has been review-bombed and currently sits at 1.2/5 stars.
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