J.Jimusho Sold Ryu

I came across this Ryutaro related article on Men’s Cyzo over the weekend. Yes, yes, I know that Men’s Cyzo is a tabloid and as such isn’t the most reliable source of information out there, but I think the article is interesting enough and also somewhat plausible, at least if you don’t take it as undeniable fact but rather the opinion of the unnamed entertainment industry insider it quotes. I’m not gonna translate the whole article because it’s tedious and I don’t have the time to do it. But I can give you a quick overview of the main points of the article. So here goes…

The first paragraph of the article quickly describes the situation as we already know it: Shuukan Josei published two photos of Ryutaro smoking a cigarette when he was 14 and 15 years old. It was confirmed by Johnny’s Jimusho and Ryutaro was suspended indefinitely from all entertainment activities.

The article then claims that the pictures were taken by a former colleague of Ryutaro‘s, i.e. a former Johnny’s Jr member, and somehow found their way into the hands of a third party. That third party then tried to sell the pictures to Johnny’s Jimusho. The negotiations went on for a while, but the seller eventually kept raising the price to several million Yen (1 million Yen = ~12,400 US$), and the Jimusho finally decided to pull out of the deal because they didn’t think it was worth it.

According to an entertainment industry insider Johnny’s Jimusho has had several different ways to deal with scandals involving their talents in the past. E.g. when in 1999 the Magazine FRIDAY published an article about Oosaka Shunsuke, Anazawa Masahiro, Asakura Kazuo and Omi Kazuki smoking and drinking the four were fired immediately. However, when in 2000 a magazine published pictures of Yamashita Tomohisa smoking a cigarette the Jimusho came to his defense by claiming that an older senpai had forced him to put that cigarette in his mouth but he didn’t actually smoke it. In light of these facts the industry insider is quoted as concluding: “Clearly, Morimoto was hung out to dry.”

The article goes on to explain that even though they haven’t done it in a while the Jimusho has given in to blackmail in the past. But since there is no guarantee that if they pay the blackmailer won’t come back for more it all comes down to a cost-benefit-analysis. Sometimes it’s easier and cheaper to build up a fresh new talent than protecting an established one. It depends on how much of a financial asset the talent in question really is, and in the case of Ryutaro he simply was too small, too unimportant, and not enough of a cash-cow to protect him.

Or in other words: he wasn’t worth it.

So there you go. When the Ryutaro story broke last week some people wondered what would have happened if it had been Yamada or Chinen. My reply to that was that in that case the whole of Hey!Say!JUMP might be on hiatus now. But after reading this article I’m not so sure about that. Maybe if it had been Yamada the Jimusho would have come up with another hilarious excuse like they did with Yamapi. “It’s not what it looks like. He was just pretending. Somebody made him do it.” Something like that.

But not for Ryutaro.

On a side note, I’ve been having a discussion about this with my boyfriend who – shockingly – said he wouldn’t have paid money for those pictures either because you can never know if the blackmailer doesn’t keep a copy of the pictures and will come back for more money somewhere down the road.

I’m no expert on blackmail and extortion or on the Japanese penal law. But here’s how I see it: if you do something like that, if you extort money from a somebody by selling them juicy pictures, you want to make sure that after you’ve done it you get rid of the evidence. Because even if trying to blackmail someone may or may not be a crime, actually doing it definitely is. So if you keep copies of the pictures your victim could just go to the police and have you arrested and indicted. If they search your place and don’t find any copies at least you can deny it all. There is no evidence. But if they do find something then you’re done for. But maybe that’s just the smart criminal in me reasoning here. There probably aren’t that many smart criminals out there.

So anyway, the other day I said that the Jimusho basically threw Ryutaro under the bus, and after reading this article I stand by that more than ever. They could have kept this scandal under wraps. They could have protected Ryutaro. They decided not to. And while I understand their reasoning from a business perspective, from a human perspective I just find it very very sad.

Sad, but not really disappointing. After having been a fan for more than seven years I have no more illusions about Johnny’s Jimusho. They have no interest in being charitable or compassionate, they want to be profitable, and that’s all. They’re not Hagrid. They’re Gollum. And that’s that.