00:00 more on this story we can take you live to Tokyo France 24's Julia Kim is
00:03 standing by for us. Julia this story then has provoked a lot of reaction but
00:10 before we get to that we know that Johnny Kitagawa had always denied these
00:14 allegations his niece has now admitted them. Walk us through this rather complex
00:20 case Julia. Well first of all it's really hard to overstate just how much
00:25 influence Johnny Kitagawa had in Japan. He was known as the godfather of J-pop
00:32 Japanese pop. He created this entire genre of Japanese boy bands. His career
00:38 spanned over 60 years and during that time he raped and sexually abused young
00:45 boys, young men who all hoped to become future pop stars with total impunity. Now
00:51 he was able to do that because Japanese media as the report stated that largely
00:56 kept quiet about all the allegations that circulated around him over the
01:01 decades. But there was one Japanese magazine though that did
01:05 publish an expose detailing some of the survivors testimonies back in the year
01:10 2000. Now this was over 20 years ago. Now that publication was sued for
01:18 defamation by Johnny Kitagawa but a civil court eventually found before that
01:24 a civil court actually found that Johnny Kitagawa's victims had actually been
01:28 abused yet no charges came of this. Johnny Kitagawa was able to continue
01:33 working well into his 80s until he died in 2019 having never faced charges and
01:38 having been buried as a cultural icon in Japan. Now obviously this changed this
01:44 March when the BBC published their documentary with testimonies from some
01:50 of these survivors and since that documentary a tidal wave of support has
01:54 been generated for these victims because more and more young men have come out
01:57 speaking of their ordeal. Now because of this growing public pressure Johnny and
02:05 Associates, the talent agency run by Johnny Kitagawa's niece
02:10 Judy Fujishima was forced to launch an external probe. They did that and the
02:15 external probe last week found that Judy Fujishima had in fact lied to the public
02:20 when she said that she didn't know about any of the abuses. It found that
02:24 actually indeed she had known and she'd done nothing about it. I mean Julia in
02:29 terms of the outrage that you refer to is this kind of gaining the same kind of
02:33 traction that we saw in the US with the Harvey Weinstein case or indeed in the
02:37 UK with the Jimmy Savile case. How are people reacting to this then? It is
02:42 definitely on the same scale because we're talking about a man whose career
02:47 spanned over half a century and everyone knows who Johnny Kitagawa is in Japan
02:52 and even after the allegations came out after the documentary rather came out in
02:59 March people still had dismissed it as fake news that had been essentially made
03:04 up by international media that they were just rumor-mongering that there wasn't
03:08 really any foundation to it. But now that this apology has come out now that Judy
03:13 Fujishima, Johnny Kitagawa's niece and the former head of the talent agency has
03:17 come out and said that has apologized has resigned I think Japanese people are
03:22 now going to come to terms with just how systemic this abuse was and ask
03:27 themselves some quite tough questions. The victims in this case have said that
03:32 they're happy, they're gratified that this sexual abuse has finally been
03:37 acknowledged but the talent agency at the moment has refused to change the
03:42 name which has drawn some ire so it remains to be seen whether or not they
03:46 will break with tradition whether they will change the name and hopefully turn
03:51 a new chapter. Well Julia as you say tough questions being asked and perhaps
03:55 some soul-searching nationally. Fernando from Tokyo, thank you.
