#tackey & tsubasa

[shirtlessjohnnysidols]

Tackey & Tsubasa

Potato 2002.12

[chisaiyume]

Tackey & Tsubasa [2002-2018]

[thebroccolination]

[Content Warning: sexual assault of minors]

There’s a documentary airing tomorrow on BBC2 about the late Johnny Kitagawa and the very open secret of the many sexual assault allegations against him.

For the uninitiated, Johnny was the founder and CEO of what I believe has been the most powerful music agency in Japan’s history. After founding the agency in 1962, Johnny and his sister Mary are known to have pulled a lot of questionable and downright abusive tactics to gain the amount of power J&A has enjoyed over the Japanese media industry.

Since their influence has been waning over the past decade or so, it’s difficult to explain concisely how strong they were, especially in the nineties and early aughts.

Like, companies were forbidden from using the idols’ images without express permission, so magazines would need to publish previews for upcoming issues featuring blacked-out silhouettes of the idols.

The point was to make J&A idols seem more exclusive and distant to augment their appeal, so only when the magazine was officially released were their images uncensored.

And of course, forever looming in the background were the ever-present allegations of sexual abuse by Johnny himself.

This isn’t in question, either. When detailed testaments from teenage boys were gathered and published in a massive expose by a well-known tabloid back in 1999, Johnny sued for defamation of character. Some of the charges—that J&A supplied minors with alcohol and drugs—were dropped. But the court found legitimacy in the sexual abuse charges. (The transcript is available in Japanese online somewhere, but I can’t remember where off the top of my head. I don’t remember if it was ever translated into English, but I’ll come back with a link if I find it.)

[Variety] Johnny Kitagawa: Power, Abuse, and the Japanese Omerta by Mark Schilling

Regardless, an official charge was never made, the public and fandom overlooked this open secret, and Johnny himself continued to live a wealthy and relatively secretive life behind the wall of his talents’ fame until his death in 2019 at the age of 87.

If you’re getting cult vibes from this, you’re drawing some sound conclusions

As an American fan who was once deep in the J&A fandoms of Tackey & Tsubasa, NEWS, Kanjani8, V6, KinKi Kids, etc.…this was a wild place to be in many ways.

From the outside, it’s probably simple enough to look at the facts and understand how clear-cut this is. Fans weren’t ignorant, either, and there was a persistent moral issue in supporting beloved idols while knowing that it led to a known abuser at the top.

And of course, not everyone believed or believes the allegations. Even if tomorrow’s documentary proves without doubt that Johnny Kitagawa sexually assaulted the children and teenagers under his power, there will always be defenders among the fanbase. At the lowest tier of morality, there will always be people whose personal comfort comes first, and rape is a big ole sad face threatening to ruin the flawless facade of Silly Handsome Rainbow Concert Land.

That said, I think what complicated things for a wide swath of the fanbase who did believe the allegations was how affectionately the idols themselves used to and still talk about Johnny. The man’s image for most fans was of an eccentric old man who had an acerbic sense of humor and spoke in random English snippets. “Did you see him?” an idol once asked the audience during a concert. “He was visiting backstage and said, ‘It’s hot out there today. They must be hot, those poor fans outside.’ So he took a box of bottled water and went to hand out waters to people.” Some fans exclaimed in recognition, and the idol laughed and said, “Someone remembers!” Because Johnny himself rarely appeared for interviews and released photos of himself only once every thousand years, the ongoing joke was that hardly anyone among the general public would have recognized this random old man as the mighty mogul of the music world. And because the idols themselves told such quirky stories, many fans chose to take the word of the idols they admired rather than confront the reality in newspapers.

While I lived in Japan, I rarely heard the allegations discussed, and whenever I brought it up among Japanese fans, the atmosphere got awkward and quiet until someone changed the subject. Worse was when I discussed it with members of the general public, many of whom seemed overwhelmingly aware but dismissive. “He’s a weird guy,” an older man once told me wryly. “Everyone knows he’s gay. That’s what they do.”

The subject of Johnny Kitagawa’s abuse is such a wide-reaching and nuanced subject, there’s no way the BBC documentary will be able to introduce Japan’s media culture, the entire J&A system, and the depth of Johnny’s abuse in an hour. But I’m relieved that it’s happening at all because for so, so long, the Japanese media has been unwilling to lose the money-making factory that is J&A by shining a spotlight on Johnny’s crimes, and so the victims of his abuse have been either ignored or reviled.

The thing to remember, I think, is the thing I keep coming back to. The vast majority of these idols joined J&A very young, and many of the older members in their twenties, thirties, and up have no other job experience to this day. Most have no university degree, and some never graduated or even attended high school. This is all some of them have, all they’ve ever had, and the sheer fear of needing to go into the job market at sixteen with nothing on your resume but junior high and “danced behind famous people for three years” in a country as stringent as Japan is unimaginable to me.

(TV Guide’s June 2000 cover featuring the Golden Era of Johnny’s Juniors, most of whom worked so extensively that they were unable to graduate high school or university. In more recent years, the agency has put stronger emphasis on Juniors pursuing their education.)

I don’t follow J&A idols anymore, but I imagine it’s less common today for someone to casually explain that he joined the agency at twelve to help support his struggling single mother and siblings. One of the saddest things I’ve ever heard Takizawa Hideaki say was how happy he was at fourteen when he realized he was among other boys whose fathers had abandoned their families. He grew up in poverty and joined J&A at thirteen, and if I start talking about his history with the agency I’ll never stop. (Thankfully, he and most of his generation have left the agency since Johnny’s death and are pursuing their own paths—though none that I’m aware of have spoken ill of their former boss.)

In the nineties, Juniors slept in two dormitories. Dormitory A was where the Juniors guaranteed to debut slept, and boys in Dormitory B knew it. The most famous boys living in the Kanto region—Takki, Tsubasa, Arashi, Yamapi, etc.—all lived in Dormitory A. After Shukan Bunshun published their expose, the dormitories were permanently closed down.

There’s no way to know what the silenced survivors have been through psychologically. Johnny himself is dead, so closure has to come from allowing the survivors heal however they need to. Japan is notoriously lacking in mental healthcare or awareness let alone compassion for sexual abuse survivors, so perhaps addressing that is the first step so they can find that closure privately.

In any case, the documentary airs tomorrow on BBC2, and I’ll be watching and hoping this is the first step in exposing the crimes committed and opening compassion for the survivors.

[aguadyne]

ytmusic kill yourself why can't I download tackey and tsubasas music

[tgtg6ch]

SixTONES - Johnny's Shuffle Medley

Jesse - Kamen Butokai / Shonentai Shintaro - DAYBREAK / Otokogumi Juri - Yozora no Mukou / SMAP Taiga - Glass no Shonen / KinKi Kids Yugo - A･RA･SHI/ Arashi Hokuto - Venus / Tackey & Tsubasa

[shirtlessjohnnysidols]

Tackey & Tsubasa

Dakinatsu

[nugulover69]

Went to find a song by Tackey & Tsubasa and most of their catalogue has been nuked from youtube aside from <2 month old uploads. sasuga avex

[wutlaikalikes]

Venus by Tackey & Tsubasa

performed by ShadowGear (Rikka x Kageyama Shien) feat. Yukoku Roberu and Aragami Oga

[ilhoonftw]

im sooo glad tsuyoshi's health got better bc i legit thought he'd retire just like tsubasa did

rip the camp duo tackey&tsubasa ... tackey is busy being evil 🤢🤢🤢

[britonell]

[the-bejeesus]

One Piece - OP 8: “Crazy Rainbow” by Tackey and Tsubasa, but the visuals have been edited to accomodate the extended version of this song

     From this point onwards, openings are 2:30, meaning there’s a lot less visuals I have to make myself. In this case I only had to make a minute’s worth. Makes things easy for me but it’ll also make things less interesting for y’all in those terms.

      As previously mentioned, I made this one just about Post-Enies Lobby. Which might sound unfair since this opening covered most of Enies Lobby. But I think the song fits the celebratory tone of Post-Enies Lobby very well.

[tgtg6ch]

SixTONES - Jr ✨