Issue:
March 2025 | Japan Media Review
The Fuji TV scandal has exposed the industry-wide mistreatment of female TV announcers
In December, several weekly magazines reported that in 2023 the popular TV variety show host and former singer Masaharu Nakai had been involved in "woman trouble" with a staff announcer at Fuji TV, one of Japan's major commercial television networks. One of them, Shukan Bunshun, reported that Nakai had paid the woman ¥90 million to "settle" the trouble, and suggested that the problem was of a sexual nature. In a subsequent article, Bunshun claimed the woman in question had been introduced to Nakai by a Fuji TV executive. At a later press conference, Fuji said that no executive was involved in the encounter, and Bunshun eventually retracted that part of its report. But the damage had been done. Nakai announced his retirement from show business at the age of 52, and Fuji TV lost almost all of its advertisers.
Even if no one at Fuji had introduced the announcer to Nakai, its corporate culture was seen to be at the heart of the matter. In early February, Yuji Kitamaru, a freelance journalist and commentator, appeared on the web program Minority Report to talk about this culture with human rights activist Sugok Shin. Kitamaru compared coverage of the Nakai scandal in the foreign press to coverage of the same in the domestic press. The cash that Nakai paid to the announcer was referred to as "hush money" by the New York Times. The term's Japanese equivalent, kuchidome-ryo, was never used by the Japanese media, which instead called the payment an "out-of-court settlement," implying there was no police involvement. "Everyone closes their eyes because it's a private matter," Kitamaru said. "But the public needs to be made aware of what it really means."
Kitamaru and Shin discussed Japan's social environment, which they said "demands" that women not talk publicly about the kind of things that may have happened to the Fuji TV announcer, including sexual assault. Japan is a patriarchal society, they said, and when men in a certain position misbehave, restitution is offered out of sight. Kitamaru pointed out that the New York Times referred to Nakai as a "former boy band star" and "aging idol," terms that imply immaturity. When you read the foreign coverage of the scandal, said Kitamaru, you get a clearer idea of its ramifications. "We think it's only Nakai's problem," he said. "But really it's Japan's problem."
Shin supplemented Kitamaru's comments with her own experience. In the 1980s, she worked for Fuji TV on a contract basis and was approached by a producer who touched her and made comments that implied she would be expected to act a certain way and do certain things. She took it to mean he wanted sex from her. She resisted and was later let go. That was considered normal for Fuji TV, she said, "and it still seems to be the case". She added that these sorts of expectations hold sway at other media companies. She'd heard many stories about men in positions of authority who had sexually assaulting female announcers and otherwise bent them to their will. Announcing or journalistic capabilities are not important. "Forty years later," she said, "I still can't watch Fuji TV."
In that regard, the matter of who set up the meeting between Nakai and the announcer is irrelevant. The culture made Nakai believe that, as a valued asset of the network, he was entitled to have his way with one of their employees. Kitamaru said that Fuji TV was the first network that became famous for hiring women announcers for their looks, with the intention of grooming them as on-air talent. Other networks followed because Fuji's announcers became stars in their own right. These women were commodified.
Consequently, announcers had a secondary asset value. A two-part article that appeared in the Tokyo Shimbun in late January focused on Fuji TV's settai practices – a reference to "entertaining guests" by wining-and-dining and similar activities. In such situations, depending on the status of the person being entertained, Fuji's female announcers are often present to wait on the guest personally. This kind of role has always been reflected in the programming, with female announcers typically "assisting" the male hosts of TV shows. Though it was revealed that Fuji TV did not directly arrange for the female announcer in question to meet with Nakai, the situation that ensued still smacked of a settai-type arrangement.
A former TV announcer told the Tokyo Shimbun that the incident proves the industry hasn't changed over the years. When she worked in television several decades ago, she was told to assume a childlike demeanor on air and speak in a higher vocal register than what was normal for her. She also noted that when a show's ratings weren't as high as expected, the first person to be replaced was usually the announcer. She added that announcers knew that if they attended settai when requested they were more likely to get better assignments and have more of a future with the company. Many announcers, in fact, consider attending settai a regular part of their job. A different announcer pointed out that this sort of dynamic is not necessarily limited to the broadcast industry. Many companies use female employees as "entertainment" resources, but she tended to think it was more mandatory in the broadcast field.
In a sense, this discussion of broadcast announcers' status has distracted the mainstream media and the public from the Fuji TV scandal itself. A January 18 article on the website Gendai Business made the case that using announcers as on-air talent and behind-the-scenes entertainers is not limited to Fuji TV. A male TV announcer who works at a different station told Gendai that the scandal has "worried" people at his place of employment. When the scandal first broke, it was only the tabloid press and weeklies that covered it, but after Nakai himself weighed in on the matter, the mainstream press picked it up. The announcer was also more specific about settai practices, explaining that such parties usually happen in a public space, like a bar or restaurant, but that there are always after-parties where the honored guest, the producer in charge, and the "invited" announcer are the only people present. And if the guest is especially important, these after-parties take place in hotel rooms that have been reserved in advance.
A series of articles in the business magazine Toyo Keizai explained that at one time, TV stations actively recruited female announcers at beauty competitions, especially those held by universities. NHK, in particular, relied on these contests quite heavily for women recruits. They were hired when they were 20 and expected to leave, presumably to marry, when they were 25. In the 1990s, announcers themselves became the subjects of variety shows. Fuji TV ran occasional specials where its stable of female announcers competed in various challenges, usually cooking and other activities stereotypically assigned to women. When the sexism promoted by these specials became too apparent, the format was changed to include male announcers, but as one insider told Toyo Keizai, the latter were also recruited mainly for their looks.
If women announcers remained at a station beyond what would be considered their youthful prime, then they were usually transferred off the air and into a different department, unless the announcer had built a brand for herself - although in that case she would probably quit the company and become a freelancer. NHK even researched the matter in 2021, surveying its own programs and those of its commercial competitors. They found that the average age of on-air female talent was somewhere between 20 and 30, while the average age of male on-air talent was over 40.
Women make up a smaller portion of employees at broadcasters than in the general labor force, especially at the executive level. The labor union that represents commercial broadcast workers said that in 2022, women accounted for 8.3% of executives at TV stations in Tokyo, and 3% at TV stations nationwide. Fuji TV has only two, and one is a former cabinet-level bureaucrat. In fact, the lack of women in positions of authority was one of the reasons that the American investment fund, Dalton, criticized Fuji Media Holdings, in which it owned a stake, saying that Fuji TV's lack of diversity demonstrated weak corporate governance.
A recent article written by former actor Megumi Morisaki for the magazine President discussed sexual harassment in the entertainment and broadcast industries. Morisaki founded an organization that tries to protect workers who are often subjected to harassment of all kinds. She points out that the Equal Employment Opportunity Act obliges business owners to prevent sexual harassment, a notion that was fortified by a revision in 2005-06 in that major companies must implement anti-harassment measures in their workplaces. This prescription was later extended to small and medium-sized companies, who had to enact training programs and consultation services to fight sexual harassment.
However, these rules didn't necessarily apply to talent at broadcasters, movie studios, and show business companies in general because such workers were often freelancers, meaning they were contracted from outside agencies. Morisaki is lobbying the government to extend protections to freelancers, since they can be targeted more easily than staff. In a survey she conducted in 2022, Morisaki found that 106 of the 481 respondents – both men and women, including announcers – said they had been "forced into sexual relationships" through their work, and that these relationships were conducted "in private settings". Broken down further, 211 were "compelled to discuss their sexual experiences" with a person in a superior position, 147 were "touched without permission," 100 were "summoned to a private place by themselves," 47 were stalked, 46 raped, and 31 "subjected to exposure of genitalia and masturbation" on the part of their interlocutors.
As Kitamaru stressed during the Minority Report discussion, the male Fuji TV executives on hand at the two scandal-related press conferences in January were directly responsible for cultivating the commodified joshi-ana (women announcers) policy at Fuji TV. This prompted Shin to remark how offended she was when they kept talking about "human rights" in relation to "protecting the privacy" of the announcer who settled with Nakai. They were obviously just using a "popular term" as a means of avoiding responsibility, she said. Kitamaru replied that he didn't think they understood the term. They thought of women announcers as objects, which by definition don't have human rights.
Philip Brasor is a Tokyo-based writer who covers entertainment, the Japanese media, and money issues. He writes the Japan Media Watch column for the Number 1 Shimbun.
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