I’ve closely followed the case of Japanese kabuki actor and tv star Kagawa Teruyuki. Partially because I’ve been a fan. Anyone who watches Japanese TV will recognize Kagawa from his roles in Hanzawa Naoki or 99.9%. (The last episode of the second season of Hanzawa topped 32.7% viewership – galloping numbers by Japan standards.)
But I’ve also been following because the scandal surrounding him didn’t die down. In fact, it only got worse.
As I noted in my article on Pixiv, the scandal broke when the Daily Shincho found that a hostess at a high end cabaret club in Ginza had sued her employer in 2019 for not protecting her from Kagawa. She eventually settled with the club, so the news didn’t make waves until Shincho reporters dug it up.
Writing for Toyo Keizai, writer Kimura Takashi gives a breakdown of what happened next. Kagawa went on a show he hosts, THE TIME, and apologized to his audience for “causing distress.” (Notably, he didn’t apologize to his victim.) His agency admitted that all of the victim’s charges were true.
Kagawa and his agency seemed to think he could wash his hands of the incident with that terse acknowledgement. But then Daily Shincho surfaced new photos of him pulling a woman’s hair and, afterwards, being confronted by the female manager (ママ) over his behavior. Meanwhile, people in Japan took to social media to fume over Kagawa’s “let bygones be bygones” mentality.
But near the top of this article is also this fairly stunning paragraph. It tells us what people in the industry knew of Kagawa’s habits:
NHK党の参議院議員・ガーシーこと東谷義和さんが「香川さんは港区界隈、すべての店で出禁」「それを銀座が受け入れちゃったから、受け入れた以上そうなることはわかってたでしょ」などとコメントしたことが大きく報じられました。また、梅沢富美男さんも、「確かにそういう噂はいっぱいあったよ。いろいろな人から聞いた。酒癖が悪いって」などとコメント。それ以外でも香川さんは、これまで酒席での様子を報じられたことがありましたし、私自身も酒癖に関する噂話を業界内で何度か聞いたことがありました。
NHK Party rep and Garcy [YouTube channel] star Higashitani Yoshikazu has been widely reported as saying, “He’s banned from all the clubs throughout Minato Ward,” and “they accepted him in Ginza knowing this.” And [actor/singer] Umezawa Tomio said, “Yeah, that’s been the subject of fierce rumor. I’ve heard from various people he’s got a bad drinking habit.” I’ve also heard reports of his drinking and rumors about his drinking habit many times.
Minato – in particular, Roppongi – is home to a number of high-scale cabaret clubs. (See my essay on Iijima Ai for details if you’re unfamiliar.) According to the scuttlebutt, Kagawa was persona non grata in pretty much all of them.
That’s quite a feat.
Kimura is writing for a business audience. So he tries to draw some parables from Kagawa Teruyuki’s self-destructive narrative. The actor, Kimura concludes, knew he had a problem and never bothered to address it. Why, Kimura wonders, didn’t Kagawa get on top of his issues when his fame took off with the first season of Hanzawa Naoki?
Kimura further knocks Kagawa for using self-serving language throughout his so-called apology. “He said nothing about the victim.” (It also didn’t help matters that Kagawa is in a new drama, Roppongi Class, where right in Episode 1, his character lectures another about his “inability to show remorse”. That scene plays…poorly in light of recent events.)
All of that is true. But what’s also true is that, as so often happens with the rich and famous, people overlooked Kagawa’s behavior for years. The Ginza clubs that admitted Kagawa as a customer, the journalists that knew about his behavior and remained quiet, the industry people who looked the other way – all contributed to this tragic sequence of events.
Maybe Kagawa’s friends and family attempted to intervene at some point. I’m sure they did. I remember all of the comments and concerns I got from friends back in my drinking days. I also remember how I didn’t stop drinking until I was too sick and tired to continue.
Kagawa, it seems, never hit that low point. And sadly, because of his power and position, no one stopped him.
Not even after someone got hurt.
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