After a months-long investigation, an independent commission looking into sexual assault allegations against former superstar Nakai Masahiro released its conclusions on March 31st. The committee concluded that Nakai had sexually assaulted a former Fuji TV female announcer during her tenure there. What’s more, it found that Nakai’s actions were directly connected to the management of Fuji’s business. In other words, the station’s employees had facilitated the assault.
The committee’s report is a fitting capstone to last week’s news, when something unthinkable finally happened: Fuji TV—the once-untouchable giant of Japanese broadcasting—cut loose its longest-reigning shōgun, Hieda Hisashi.
Read: Fuji TV independent committee’s findings
To the untrained eye, it looked like a retirement. A dignified sendoff. A “new chapter.”
But to those who know the system, this wasn’t retirement. This was a ritual execution in a crumbling kingdom—an industry dinosaur finally thrown overboard as the network tried to keep from sinking under the weight of its own lies.
The scandal that brought it all crashing down? A perfect, poisonous storm of celebrity worship, corporate cover-up, and a very public reckoning with power and sexual violence—centered around one of Japan’s most beloved entertainers, Nakai Masahiro, and the network that once built him into a god.
The assault allegations
In June 2023, Nakai—former leader of SMAP, Japan’s most iconic boy band—allegedly engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with a woman in her twenties during a private dinner. The meeting had originally been arranged by a Fuji TV executive, who canceled at the last minute, leaving Nakai alone with the woman. She later developed PTSD and required hospitalization.
The media initially ignored it. But on December 19, 2024, Josei Seven broke the silence. Shukan Post may have even touched on the scandal earlier. A week later, on December 25th, Shūkan Bunshun detonated the story, confirming not only the assault allegations but also Fuji Television’s deliberate attempts to suppress internal dissent and protect Nakai.
It was a bad Christmas Day for Fuji TV. Santa Claus discovered they had been very naughty and not very nice.
The victim reportedly received a ¥90 million settlement (about $590,000). Nakai admitted “wrongdoing” but refused to say whether that included sexual assault, citing the confidentiality clause in the settlement.
Public reaction was swift and unforgiving. Anonymous employee letters leaked to the press. Advertisers pulled their money. Social media exploded. Viewers who once adored Nakai turned cold. And Fuji’s silence only made things worse.
SMAP: The Manufactured Dream That Became a National Obsession
To understand the scale of betrayal, you have to understand who SMAP was.
They weren’t just a boy band. They were the boy band.
From the late ’80s through the 2000s, SMAP became a ubiquitous cultural force, not through musical brilliance (none of them were particularly gifted singers), but through relentless cross-platform saturation. They hosted TV shows. Starred in dramas. Fronted ad campaigns. They were sold like flavors of convenience store mochi—pick your favorite, or love them all.
And no network benefited more than Fuji Television.
The TV show SMAPxSMAP, referred to colloquially as “Sma-Sma,” wasn’t just a hit—it was a cultural institution. Nakai, the sharp-tongued MC with impeccable timing, became the face of Fuji’s golden age. The show ran for 20 years right up until SMAP disbanded.
Fuji didn’t just broadcast SMAP. They manufactured them.
The long rot: Nakai’s televised humiliation (2016)
Back in 2016, Fuji aired what looked like a variety show, but felt more like a hostage video.
That January, SMAP’s breakup had become national news. The group had tried to leave Johnny’s Entertainment, the agency run by Johnny Kitagawa—an industry kingpin long shielded by media moguls like Hieda, despite credible, decades-long allegations of sexual abuse.
On SMAPxSMAP, now Fuji’s flagship show, Nakai and his bandmates stood stiffly and apologized to the nation—not for a scandal, but for daring to think they could leave the agency. Their eyes were hollow. Their posture: defeated.
Fuji broadcast it with no hesitation. No irony. No shame.
The message was clear: Disobedience will be punished, and we will air the punishment live.
That moment, for many, was the first visible crack in Japan’s tightly controlled entertainment edifice.
And when it all started to fall apart, they sacrificed Nakai with the same cold calculation they used to build him. But they also would later shelter him like their Golden Boy.
Until he brought the ship down with Fuji TV on it.
Fuji’s turn under the lights
Flash forward to 2025. After the Bunshun exposé and the public meltdown, Fuji tried to hold a closed-door press conference. They tightly controlled the questions and only admitted members of their “press club.” They refused to allow cameras.
It was a widely panned disaster. The company was forced to hold a second, public press conference.
This second press conference was also a catastrophe—meandering, stiff, and dripping with performative humility. Executives offered scripted apologies. They dodged hard questions. They stressed “ongoing investigations” and “respecting privacy.”
It was, in the words of one industry insider, “a sequel to the SMAP apology—only now the network was the one blinking under the lights.”
Rather than restoring trust, the conference deepened public rage. It revealed a company still stuck in the Showa era—tone-deaf, reactive, and fundamentally unwilling to name the problem: itself.
The fall of Hieda Hisashi: end of the Shogunate
Behind all this was Hieda Hisashi, the chairman emeritus, the fixer, the man who ran Fuji with the tight-lipped authority of a Cold War spymaster.
Under Hieda, Fuji TV became not a broadcaster, but a propaganda machine for the Japanese entertainment-industrial complex. His ties to Johnny Kitagawa were no secret. His distaste for transparency was legendary. He cultivated loyalty, crushed dissent, and watched as the network’s soul rotted under the weight of ratings, influence, and silence.
His fall mirrors that of Tsuneo Watanabe at Yomiuri Shimbun—another media warlord who turned a great institution into a personal kingdom, and then presided over its slow collapse.
Like Watanabe, Hieda wasn’t pushed out for what he did, but for what he represented: a rotting legacy, a rigged system, and a future no longer willing to wait for them to step aside.
Fuji’s new leadership team now touts that they’ve lowered the average executive age from 67.3 to 59.5 and increased female representation on the board to 30%. That’s not reform. That’s optics. That’s damage control. That’s a dying regime painting its own tomb.
What this means for Japan
This isn’t just a media scandal. It’s a cultural reckoning.
For decades, Japan buried sexual abuse behind smiles, enforced “harmony” through silence, and offered ritual apologies in place of structural change.
The Johnny’s Entertainment saga was a sigh of regret. This? This is a scream.
This is Japan’s homegrown #MeToo moment. A reckoning led, not by foreign influence or hashtags, but by fed-up viewers, courageous employees, and a public unwilling to accept the status quo. This isn’t the West exporting protest. This is Japan evolving—painfully, publicly, and irrevocably.
Fuji Television sold dreams for decades. Turns out those dreams were weaponized PR campaigns protecting predators and punishing anyone who stepped out of line.
And when the fantasy finally cracked, it wasn’t the idols who fell first. It was the men behind the cameras—caught with the lights on, the mic still hot, and no script left to read.
Let it burn. Let the ashes make room for something better.
Have thoughts on this article? Share them with us on our Bluesky account or the Unseen Japan Discord server.
Tip This Article
We’re an independent site that keeps our content free of paywalls and intrusive ads. If you liked this story, please consider a tip or recurring donation of any amount to help keep our content free for all.
What to read next
Review: Detective Conan – One-Eyed Flashback Is What You Want From a Conan Flick
Yep, it’s another Conan film – but one that’s entertaining for non-fans while giving fans a deeper look at a recurring character.
Detective Conan: What Makes Japan’s Popular Anime Fun – and Patently Ridiculous
Here’s what’s made the Detective Conan series so popular – and the silly things you should ignore to enjoy it.
Company to Release CD for Dead Japanese Singer – With Her Private Nudes Included
Fans and even politicians are angry at a record company’s plans to include unreleased nudes of enka singer Yashiro Aki in its CD release.
