Shimada Shinsuke, the Jay Leno of Japan retires after yakuza ties exposed.

In Japan it has been front-page news for the past three days that Japan’s most ubiquitous and popular television comic and host, Shinsuke Shimada, is retiring from the entertainment industry after admitting to extensive ties to the yakuza, Japan’s organized crime. Before his announcement, Shimada hosted six different programs, aired in Osaka and Tokyo. The scandal would be the equivalent of Jay Leno or Regis Philbin confessing to being in cahoots with Mexican kingpins.... Read More

Japanese TV Star Shimada Shinsuke retires before yakuza ties exposed

(Note: This article was originally written before the 10 pm press conference on the 24th. There is an update here on The Atlantic Wire. ) Shimada Shinsuke (島田紳助） one of Japan’s more prominent television personalities is scheduled to announce his retirement from the industry or at least his talent agency, Yoshimoto Kogyo (吉本興業） at a press conference at 10pm today. Allegedly, the reasons behind his retirement are  that his close ties to a member of the... Read More

The New Sex-Ed: Yakuza Awareness Classes

This August, Police in Fukuoka have started conducting organized crime education and awareness classes at middle and high schools in the prefecture. Prefectural police report that the current cultural tolerance of the yakuza often results in admiration of them by misinformed youth; indeed, many yakuza first participated in gang activities in their formative early teens. The police have therefore created this program to educate middle and high school students about the realities... Read More

Police raid Daikanyama club in Kanto Rengo-kai crackdown

In the last year, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department have made major crackdowns on clubs the city, including raids without warning. Part of the reason these raids are taking place dates back to the brawl between famous Kabuki actor Ebizono and a member of the Kanto Rengo-kai, a non-designated organized crime group that is loosely structured and has been amassing serious power in Tokyo. For many years, the Azabu and Daikanyama areas were considered off-limits to the drug... Read More

Taro Kono: A new leader for a new LDP?

Taro Kono, 2010, illustration by @marikurisato  “I’m really getting sick and tired of talking pessimistic about the future of Japan. Two years ago, I said, let me run the LDP, I can probably run it better than anyone else.” With that, Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) member Taro Kono simultaneously opened the press conference and announced his intention to seek the presidency of his party. Kono, who was first elected in 1996 and currently serves in the Lower House, won... Read More

Going through the motions in The Great Happiness Space

For those looking to get the low-down on what exactly goes on at a host club—that flashy, boozy Japanese phenomenon where Labyrinth’s King Jareth-meets-salaryman ’hosts’ entertain J-women for cash—the 2006 documentary The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief is the place to start. We posted a review of the film last year, and now JSRC  have hooked up with director Jake Clennell to get the story behind what it was like to document the nightly... Read More

NISA Needs To Take Evil Lessons

It has been recently revealed that in 2006 the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency asked Chubu Electric company to recruit citizens to ask “pre-arranged questions” (“やらせ質問”) and speak favorably about nuclear power at public hearings on the proposed use of MOX fuel. These hearings took place in the summer of 2006 in Shizuoka and Ehime prefectures. Certain utilities asked its employees and even local residents to say positive things about the plutonium thermal... Read More