In 2023, Japanese media began reporting extensively on sexual abuse allegations against Johnny Kitagawa, founder of the artist (idol) management company Johnny & Associates, Inc. Yet the striking part was the previous silence, which had held for so long despite decades of rumours. Many people in Japan, especially those now in their forties or older, had heard those rumours at some point in their youth. They were never confirmed, and the details were often vague, but there was a shared sense that something might be wrong.
Johnny & Associates held enormous cultural and economic power. Its performers dominated television, music, and advertising, shaping the image of male idols for generations. Questioning such an institution was difficult, almost unthinkable. Most people assumed nothing could be done. It felt distant, as if it belonged to a different world, separate from their own lives, and that distance made it easier to remain passive. Silence, in that sense, was not always a deliberate choice.
As the allegations gained wider media attention in 2023, another pattern emerged. Many reports and commentaries suggested that a BBC documentary had triggered the Japanese media’s sudden interest in the case. The idea that change comes from external pressure, or gaiatsu (外圧), is a familiar one in Japan. It captures a common attitude. Problems that go unaddressed at home can suddenly become visible once they are recognised from abroad. People often look for external validation to lend legitimacy to concerns that had long existed at home but were never openly acknowledged. So has the coverage actually changed the system that allowed the silence to continue?
Answering that requires looking at a kind of social force that shapes how people notice, respond to, and sometimes ignore difficult issues in Japan. No single person or institution controls it, and it is written into no law, yet it is widely shared and quietly powerful. At its best it keeps the peace, letting people get along without constant conflict. The same force can also make certain experiences hard to acknowledge, especially when they unsettle what is already accepted. In those moments silence becomes the easier option. People are not always indifferent. Often they lack the information, the language, or the space to respond.
This is not a uniquely Japanese phenomenon. Similar dynamics appear in many societies. In Japan, though, they often take subtler forms. Communication leans heavily on context, implication, and what is left unsaid, and the mood of an exchange can shift quickly. Reading the atmosphere becomes an essential skill. One consequence is that silence itself carries meaning and tends to reinforce itself. To understand it, you have to watch how people interact day to day, verbally and nonverbally. It shows up in major scandals and in small everyday moments alike: a hesitation before speaking, a topic quickly changed, a concern left unvoiced, the quiet habit of taking our cue from those around us. These moments set what counts as normal and what is treated as beyond question. Some would call this ‘culture’, since the behaviours behind it are long-established and hard to change. But that framing risks making it seem inevitable.
If these patterns are tied to real harm and suffering, they should not be accepted as given. They need to be examined and, where necessary, challenged.
The force that kept people silent in the Kitagawa case may still be at work. The notion that foreign pressure prompted change points to something beyond a reliance on outside validation. It reveals a hierarchy of credibility, in which voices from Europe or North America carry more authority than domestic ones. That, in turn, can discourage people in Japan from speaking out until an issue has been recognised elsewhere, or named as a problem by authoritative outsiders.
In 2025, some victims said that, although many issues remain unresolved, the momentum has faded. As one put it, ‘For a time, we were able to ride the “black ships” of the BBC and the United Nations, but now we find ourselves on nothing more than a small raft.’ Their concern is no longer only the number of victims compensated. It is also how to stop cases of child sexual abuse like these from recurring. They press for real internal reform and greater transparency within the management company. The problem runs deeper still. Even after the case was widely reported, little changed in the web of relationships that held it in place, among government and business, the media and corporations, government and the media, and performers and the companies that managed them.
By early 2026, more than 1,000 people had come forward as victims in the Kitagawa case. Of these, more than 550 had accepted the terms offered by SMILE-UP., the company set up to provide redress. The company posts figures and updates on the process on its website, yet some victims see no sign of sincerity or real improvement. Former performers have filed lawsuits in the United States (2024) and Japan (2025), seeking damages tied to questions of liability. SMILE-UP. filed its own suit in Tokyo in 2025, seeking confirmation that it owes no damages to three people who rejected the compensation framework and one who accepted it but disputed the amount. Both sides are now suing each other over compensation.
Those accounts show that the same force has shaped the case for a long time and still touches some people today. It will keep doing so until we see its effect on them and on ourselves. The lesson here points inward as much as outward, to institutions and to our own habits. Silence is rarely imposed from the top down. It is reproduced through everyday choices and assumptions. Seeing this is not about blaming individuals. It is about recognising how easily anyone can become part of a system that discourages speaking out. Two questions matter, then. Why did people stay silent in the past, and what conditions would let them speak, and be heard, now? Changing those conditions may be slow and hard.
Without that effort, the same patterns will repeat, and other voices will go unheard.
This post is based on Nishikawa, Yukiko. 2026. ‘The Architecture of Complicity: Media, Power and Conspiracy of Silence in the Johnny Kitagawa Sexual Abuse Case.’ Japan Forum, March, 1–23. .
