Hold on to your hats here but – I think it’s possible that the patriarchy might not be a great system by which to organise a society. Mainly because of the men in it.
It is hard not to see the headlines (Sexual abuse and harassment! Murders! Domestic violence! Add “police” to all of those and “celebrity”, “footballer”, “politician”, “coach” or “priest” to most of them) and start to draw some vague conclusions. Immerse yourself in the world of Netflix and other documentaries about abuse – most recently the one about Bill Cosby, but you can take your pick from a multitude of others, from Jimmy Savile to Michael Jackson to Jeffrey Epstein to Harvey Weinstein to R Kelly via many, many more – and it becomes hard not to ask the question: does any man strive to gain wealth or influence for any reason other than to reach a point where they can abuse with impunity those under their control? How long do we give it before we start treating anyone who wants to become rich, famous or powerful in any way as automatically suspect?
The latest thing pushing me towards radical gynocratic measures is journalist Mobeen Azhar’s investigation, as part of the award-winning This World BBC documentary strand, into Johnny Kitagawa. Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop (iPlayer) tells the story of Kitagawa’s idolisation in Japan as the more-or-less inventor of Japanese boybands and founder of the all-male talent agency Johnny & Associates that built his reputation as a hit-maker and star-maker. When he died in 2019 he was mourned nationwide as a hero. “He is god,” says one fan vox popped by Azhar.
He was also, it seems clear, a paedophile who abused an uncountable number of boys over the decades as he sat like a spider at the centre of an increasingly large and unbreakable web of influence over the Japanese media and psyche, catching young prey. Rumours about his proclivities circulated for years. Two reporters from the magazine Shūkan Bunshun ran a series of articles in 1999 containing testimonies of several men who, as boys, had been abused by Kitagawa in the “dormitory” of his home where all his potential young stars slept. It resulted in a court case when Kitagawa sued, an appeal, and the magazine being almost wholly vindicated. The Japanese mainstream media, dependent on access to Kitagawa’s “products” for profit, maintained a near-unbroken omertà throughout. No police investigation appears to have resulted from any of it. “I have been in despair about this for 23 years,” says one of the Bunshun reporters, who cries still at the memory of interviewing the shaking, weeping men who told him their stories.
Azhar tracks down a few more recent graduates from Kitagawa’s dormitory/agency. They tell similar stories – kindness, consideration, baths, undressings, massages, mouths, pain – but with almost no apparent trauma. They smile brightly and explain that they loved him, that it was understood there had to be a payment for future stardom, that it isn’t abuse if this, it isn’t really abuse if that … “He didn’t get me that much,” says one. “I still think we were treated with love,” says another. It is a rare and breathtaking insight into how grooming works and how deep the psychology of abuse is. Extrapolate further, and you can see how it gives rise to a whole society (beyond that part of it in financial thrall to his empire) that refuses to face the truth and prefers instead to venerate an accused man even after death.
It is a pity that Azhar’s main reaction to his interviewees (once he has left them) is one of childlike outrage and disbelief rather than a more detailed unpicking of the culture of shame and the importance of politeness in Japan. Similarly, his incredulity and frustration at the refusal of Johnny & Associates (now run by Kitagawa’s niece, Julie Fujishima) to engage with his inquiries comes across as petulant rather than professional, which slightly undermines the tone of the whole.
Diehard optimists will take comfort from the fact that we at least have moved some way – not far enough, but some way – beyond Japan’s approach to child abuse and other such horrors. We have a way of talking about it publicly, we recognise that victim-blaming (internalised or externalised) is wrong, we have a press that will cover these stories when they break. How close any country is to finding a solution to the root cause of all these stories, of all this abuse is still a matter very much up for debate.
Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop aired on BBC Two and is now on iPlayer.
• This article was amended on 8 March 2023 to correct a misspelling of the Japanese periodical Shūkan Bunshun.
