How the TV Fuji scandal has become a cultural calculation for Japan

After a survey of several months, an independent committee examining the allegations of sexual assault against the former superstar Nakai Masahiro published his conclusions on March 31. The committee concluded that Nakai had sexually assaulted a former Fuji TV ad during her mandate there. In addition, he found that Nakai’s actions were directly linked to the management of Fuji’s affairs. In other words, the resort employees had facilitated the assault.

The Committee’s report is an angular stone appropriate to last week’s news, when something unthinkable happened: Fuji TV – the giant once to the Japanese radiodiffusion – loses his oldest shōgun, Hieda Hisashi.

With an unreal eye, he looked like a retirement. A worthy shipment. A “new chapter”.

But for those who know the system, it was not a retirement. It was a ritual execution in a ruined kingdom – a dinosaur of the industry finally threw over board while the network tried not to flow under the weight of its own lies.

The scandal that has everything crashed? A perfect and toxic storm of the cult of celebrities, the concealment of businesses and a very public account with power and sexual violence – have concentrated in one of the most loved artists in Japan, Nakai Masahiro, and the network that once transformed it into God.

Aggression allegations

In June 2023, Nakai – the leader of SMAP, the most emblematic boys’ group in Japan – embarked on a non -consensual sexual activity with a woman in her twenties during a private dinner. The meeting was originally organized by a Fuji TV frame, which canceled at the last minute, leaving Nakai alone with the woman. She then developed an SSPT and needs hospitalization.

The media initially ignored it. But on December 19, 2024, Josei Seven broke the silence. Shukan Post may have even discussed the scandal earlier. A week later, on December 25, Shūkan Bunshun exploded history, confirming not only the allegations of assault, but also the deliberate attempts of Fuji Television to suppress internal dissent and protect Nakai.

It was a bad Christmas day for Fuji TV. Santa Claus discovered that they had been very mean and not very nice.

The victim would have received a settlement of 90 million yen (around $ 590,000). Nakai admitted “reprehensible acts” but refused to say if it included sexual assault, citing the confidentiality clause in the regulations.

The public’s reaction was rapid and ruthless. Anonymous letters from employees disclosed to the press. Advertisers pulled their money. Social media exploded. Viewers who once loved Nakai were cold. And Fuji’s silence has only won things.

SMAP: The fabricated dream that has become a national obsession

To understand the magnitude of betrayal, you must understand who SMAP was.

They were not only a group of boys. They were THE Band band.

From the end of the 1980s to the 2000s, SMAP became an omnipresent cultural force, not by musical brilliance (none of them was particularly good), but by its implacable multiplatform saturation. They hosted television shows. Played in dramas. Frowning advertising camps. They were sold as Mochi convenience store flavors – choose your favorite, or love them all.

And no network has benefited more than Fuji television.

The SMAPXSMAP television show, colloquially called like “SMA -SMA”, was not only a success – it was a cultural institution. Nakai, the lively MC with impeccable timing, has become the face of Fuji’s golden age. The show lasted 20 years until Smap dissolves.

Fuji did not simply broadcast SMAP. They made them.

The long rot: Nakai’s television humiliation (2016)

In 2016, Fuji broadcast what looked like a variety program, but more like a hostage video.

In January, SMAP’s breakup had become a new national. The group had attempted to leave Johnny’s Entertainment, the agency led by Johnny Kitagawa – a long -term industry king’s track by media magnates like Hieda, despite credible allegations and decades of sexual abuse.

On SMAPXSMAP, Fuji’s flagship spectacle, Nakai and his group comrades, stood up stiff and apologized to the nation – not for a scandal, but for daring to think that they could leave the agency. Their eyes were hollow. Their posture: defeated.

Fuji broadcast it without hesitation. No irony. No shame.

The message was clear: disobedience will be punished and we will broadcast the punishment live.

This moment, for many, was the first visible crack in the closely controlled entertainment building in Japan.

And when it all started to collapse, they sacrificed Nakai with the same cold calculation they had used to build it. But they would also shelter him later like their gold.

Until he killed the ship with Fuji TV on it.

Fuji’s Tour under the lights

Flash forward in 2025. After the exhibition of Bunshun and the public merger, Fuji tried to hold a press conference behind closed doors. They closely checked the questions and admitted only the members of their “press club”. They refused to allow the cameras.

It was a widely swept disaster. The company was forced to hold a second public press conference.

This second press conference was Also A disaster – mix, stiff and dripping with performative humility. The leaders offered scripted apology. They dodged difficult questions. They underlined the “in progress surveys” and “respect for privacy”.

It was, in the words of an initiate of the industry, “a series of SMAP apology – only now the network was the one that flashes under the lights.”

Rather than restoring confidence, the conference deepened the rage of the public. He revealed that a company is still stuck in the era of Showa – a sneaky, responsive and fundamentally unapproved tone to name the problem: itself.

The fall of Hieda Hisashi: End of Shogunate

Behind all this, Hieda Hisashi, the emeritus president, the fixer, the man who led Fuji with the tight authority of a deadline of cold war.

Under Hieda, Fuji TV has not become a diffuser, but a propaganda machine for the Japanese-industrial entertainment complex. His links with Johnny Kitagawa were not a secret. His disgust for transparency was legendary. He cultivated loyalty, crushed dissent and looked at the soul of the network rot under the weight of the dimensions, influence and silence.

His fall reflects that of Tsuneo Watanabe to Yomiuri Shimbun – another media warlord who transformed a great institution into a personal kingdom, then presided over his slow collapse.

Like Watanabe, Hieda was not pushed for what he did, but for what he represented: a rotten heritage, a rigged system and a future no longer have to wait for them to step back.

The new Fuji leadership team now boasts of lowering the average executive age from 67.3 to 59.5 and increased female representation to the 30%board of directors. It is not a reform. It’s optics. It is the control of the damage. It is a dying diet that paints his own tomb.

What it means for Japan

It is not only a media scandal. It is a cultural calculation.

For decades, Japan has buried sexual abuse behind smiles, applied “harmony” by silence and offered ritual apology in place of structural change.

Johnny’s Entertainment’s saga was a sigh of regret. This? It’s a cry.

This is the #MeToo moment of Japan. A calculation has led, not by a foreign influence or hashtags, but by viewers, courageous employees and an audience who does not want to accept the status quo. It is not the western export protest. It is Japan evolving – with wool, publicly and irrevocably.

Fuji Television has sold dreams for decades. It turns out that these dreams were armed public relations campaigns protecting predators and punishing anyone who has come out of the line.

And when the fantasy was finally cracked, it was not the idols that fell first. They are the men behind the cameras – taken with the lights on, the microphone still hot and there is no longer any script to read.

Let it burn. Let the ashes make room for something better.