TOKYO and SANTA MONICA – Somewhere in Los Angeles, a man sat at the bar. Three stools down, the young woman with the black dreads sipped the pink drink. She was taking her time, he thought to himself. He looked at his watch again for the fourth time in 20 minutes.
She should be feeling the buzz pretty soon. As soon as she started to drift off, he would pounce. He had done this several times over the past year. The tricky part was putting the drug in the drink without being caught.
He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t help himself. He didn’t care about forcing her to do something against her will. (FICTION).
On the same night halfway around the world, the middle age businessman and his twenty-something assistant stepped into the elevator in the swanky Roppongi hotel in downtown Tokyo. He had just closed a big deal for his technology company and he was on top of the world. He felt empowered. Invulnerable.
He looked at his young assistant. She idolized him. He knew it. She wanted to learn as much about the business as possible in a short amount of time. How much she would learn and how fast she would rise in the company depended on what she was willing to do tonight. Tonight, he wanted to party. So what if he had took a few liberties. After all, a President of The United States once said he could, grab women by the PU#@Y, “they loved it,” he quipped.
“Why don’t we have a celebratory drink in my room,” the man said. She paused and looked at him for a moment before nodding in agreement. As the door closed, he felt the excitement building. (FICTION).
The above descriptions are fictitious preludes to possible sexual assault scenarios. Although they are fiction, are they really extreme stretches of the imagination? Couldn’t you see them happening?
Over the past serval years, women have been vindicated for sexual assault perpetrated against them. E. Jean Carroll won her defamation case against Donald Trump in 2023. A jury also found Trump liable for sexual abuse. The jury awarded her U$D 5 million.
Several actresses found vindication after Harvey Weinstein, the famed Hollywood producer, was found guilty in 2022 for rape and sexual assault. Weinstein’s lawyers appealed and a judge set a new date to hear Weinstein’s case sometime later this year.
Rumors swirled around Sean Combs for years. Combs aka P. Diddy aka Puff Daddy aka Diddy, aka Love – is currently in jail awaiting trial for racketing and sexually trafficking. Stories surfaced that Combs raped both men and women at his infamous white parties he threw in the exclusive Hamptons of New York. Who can forget the recently surfaced video of Combs beating his then girlfriend in 2016, Cassie Ventura, at a Los Angeles hotel.
Sexual abuse of both women and men is not limited to the United States.
In 2023, news broke that Johnny Kitagawa, the founder of the Japanese talent agency, Johnny & Associates, repeatedly sexually abused young men between the mid 1970’s and early 2000’s. Kitagawa was responsible for creating some of the biggest Japanese Boy Bands including SMAP.
Kitagawa passed away before charges could be brought by his accusers.
On January 23, 2025, The Associated Press reported that Masahiro Nakai, originally part of the Boy Band, SMAP, retired from his media career after he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2023.
Nakai has been a staple in the Japanese media for the past 30 years. He was a singer, a television drama star, a sports announcer, television host, and a sports announcer.
The public loved him and so did the advertisers.
But that all came to a slow halt approximately six months ago when a report was leaked that a Fuji TV producer introduced a women to Nakai in 2023. Nakai allegedly assaulted the women and supposedly paid here at least U$D 1 million.
The public outraged simmered and eventually boiled over this past week.
While it is unclear what happened between the unidentified woman and Nakai, hush money seems to have been paid to the woman. Fuji TV executives were also involved with providing mental healthcare to the women in order for her to deal with the trauma she suffered.
Hit them where it hurts.
In a move that astonished the Japanese media and conservative business community, advertisers pulled their commercials from FUJI TV, forcing the network to directly deal with and take responsibility for the situation. Fuji was forced to show public service announcements instead of paid commercial advertising.
Earlier today and bowing (literally) to the pressure imposed by the public and their advertisers, two high level media executives from Fuji TV, chairman Shuji Kano and president Koichi Minato stepped down after allegations that they were involved in the alleged cover-up.
Minato said, “I feel deeply the weight of my undermining the trust in the media.” He continued, “Looking back, I realize there were shortcomings in our response.”
For his part, Nakai accepted full responsibility for his actions and apologized for his action. However, Nakai-kun, as he was known, insisted that some of the things being reported were “different from the facts.”
As always, the question of “Why did this happen?” is left unanswered. We hope the woman is able to heal from the trauma she suffered.
Some content courtesy of The New York Post, BBC, CBS News, Google Images, The Associated Press, Asahi.com, The Asahi Shimbun
