Mei Nagano's reported two-timing with Kei Tanaka continuing to take commercial toll
TOKYO (TR) – The commercial fallout from the reported two-timing of actress Mei Nagao with actors Kei Tanaka and Kim Mu-jun is continuing.
Sankei Sports learned on Tuesday that photos and videos of Tanaka have been removed from the official websites for Suntory Holdings Limited, MOS Food Services, Inc. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.
Tanaka, 40, had been appearing in commercials for Suntory's Kakubin whiskey and Kaku Highball products. In an interview with Sankei Sports , Suntory commented, 'In light of the current situation, we have decided that it is difficult to convey the true value of the brand.' The photos and videos were removed on Tuesday afternoon.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries also removed such content on the same day. 'We made a comprehensive judgment after considering various impacts,' a representative of the company said. Affair
Last month, a reporter for weekly tabloid Shukan Bunshun found Nagano, 25, inviting an apparently drunk Tanaka, who is married, into her apartment in Minato Ward late at night on April 19. Nagano and Tanaka met when they co-starred in the film 'And the Baton Was Passed' in 2021.
Further, she spent the night with Kim, her 26-year-old co-star in the TBS drama 'Caster,' the day before, the magazine reported.
On May 7, the online version of Bunshun reported intimate chats between Tanaka and Nagano on the app Line. Mei Nakano (X) Commercial fallout
Although both agencies deny the relationship and the existence of the Line conversations, the cancellations from Tuesday show their efforts have not stopped what is a widening scandal.
On May 1, images were removed from the official website of Kikkoman Corporation, which uses Tanaka as a pitchman. That same day, Eye City, a contact lens specialty retailer, removed content featuring Nagano.
A source with Eye City tells the Sankei that the scandal did not have any impact on the decision, saying that the campaign had ended. Photos and videos have also been removed from the official websites of JCB Co., Ltd. and Sunstar.
An insider says, 'This trend will continue, and the contract will likely end when it expires.' No press
Meanwhile, Sankei Sports has learned that an opening-day stage event to be held on May 16 for the Nagano-starring movie 'Kakkaku Shikajika' will be held without press in attendance. A source explanis, 'If the media were invited in now, it would be dominated by Nagano's scandal, so they are shutting out the press.'
Normally, a stage event is held after a movie is released to mark the film's success. 'But even if it is held, it will be difficult to allow the press into the venue in the same way,' the same source says.
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Yomiuri Shimbun
26-05-2025
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Song Written by Japanese POW in Mongolia Transcribed to Sheet Music for First Time
The Yomiuri Shimbun Toshiyuki Tanaka, left, sings 'Toraware no tabibito' in Gyoda, Saitama Prefecture, on March 7. A song created by Japanese prisoners of war interned in Mongolia following the end of World War II has been transcribed to sheet music by a singer in Saitama Prefecture. The singer, Toshiyuki Tanaka, made the transcription at the request of the internees' bereaved families. The transcription is a precious document of the internment in Mongolia. The families are hoping that it will become a symbol of friendship between Japan and Mongolia. The Yomiuri Shimbun The completed sheet music of 'Toraware no tabibito' Gin no koya o kyo mo yuku Rakuda no mure wa oraka ni (We go to the silver wilderness again today A herd of camels look easygoing) Thus starts the song, 'Toraware no tabibito' (Travelers in captivity). In February, the song was performed at a recital in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, by Tanaka, 68. He sang in his deep baritone voice while accompanied by pensive piano-playing in front of an audience of about 40 people. 'I began to be overwhelmed by the sentiments of the internees,' said a teary 62-year-old woman who listened intently to the performance. The catalyst for the transcription came in autumn 2017, when Kobe-based former internee Masao Tomohiro, 100, sang the song at a meeting of a group comprised of former Mongolia internees and their families. Fusae Suzuki, 88, from Tokyo, who lost her father in Mongolia, was at the meeting that day. Suzuki thought she must do something to pass the song down for posterity. Her determination grew stronger when the group dissolved due mainly to the members' aging. The Yomiuri Shimbun Fusae Suzuki Last August, she asked for help from Tanaka, whom she met at a private study group. Through listening to a video recording of Tomohiro's singing, Tanaka transcribed the song note by note, completing the melody in February. Sakura ka kiku ka aoba ka to Kaeritsuku hi no yorokobi o Katatta tomo wa sudeni naku Ihatsu mo koru ro no yoru (Cherry blossoms, chrysanthemums or green leaves The joy of returning home A friend who spoke about it is already gone The hair he left freezes at night in jail) The song's lyrics describe the severity of internment and the homesickness of the internees. Suzuki's father, Jun Arai, who lived in Manchuria (in northeastern China) as a trade company employee, was conscripted into the army shortly before the end of the war. As soon as the war ended, he was forcibly sent to Mongolia. He died about six months before internees were allowed to return to Japan. 'I think the only thing that helped him hang on was his longing for home,' she said about her father's suffering. Internment in Mongolia Most of the approximately 575,000 Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union during World War II were sent to Siberia. However, about 14,000 of them were taken to Mongolia, which was fighting in the war against Japan alongside the Soviet Union. The prisoners of war were forced to do construction work for the Mongolian government building, a state university and other structures in Ulaanbaatar. About 1,700 of the internees are believed to have died due to severe cold and hard labor. A supplement of 'Horyo Taikenki 1' — the first volume of a record of the internment in Siberia and Mongolia published in Japan in 1998 — states the names of the lyricist and the composer of the song. Although it cannot be definitely confirmed, their names' characters were likely read as Toshie Yamada and Ryoichi (or Yoshikazu) Takahashi, respectively. Yamada was a medical officer, and Takahashi was a graduate of a music college, according to journalist Hirohiko Ide, 69, a former Yomiuri Shimbun staff writer who has reported on the internment in Mongolia. Other details about the song remain unknown, however, and no sheet music has been discovered. Unlike the cases in Siberia, where there were many internees, there are hardly any records about the songs written during the internment of Japanese in Mongolia. Of the 252 songs recorded in the 1998 book, only five are about internment in Mongolia. 'I suspect 'Toraware no tabibito' is the only song that has been transcribed,' Ide said. While the internees focused on their days of hardship and pain in the songs, they also found some peace of mind. The Yomiuri Shimbun Masao Saito Masao Saito, 99, who now lives in Sapporo, was one of the internees. The severe cold would freeze even their eyelashes. At night, they had to endure icy cold and hunger in the drafty camps. 'We didn't have anything to enjoy, so we eased our souls with the songs,' he recalled. The score for 'Toraware no tabibito' ends optimistically with the piano accompaniment ending in a major key. '[It's] because I want this song to help nurture friendship and peace between the two countries,' Tanaka said. In July, the Emperor and the Empress will make an official visit to Mongolia. A visit to a memorial monument for the Japanese internees during the trip is under consideration. 'I hope many people will learn about the hardships of the internment as well as the fact that Japanese were involved in the modernization of Mongolia,' Suzuki said. 1,522 internees identified Starting in 1991, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry started receiving lists from Mongolia of the names of internees who died in captivity. The ministry is working on identifying the internees through the lists as well as relevant Japanese documents. So far 1,522 internees have been identified. Meanwhile, the recovery of the internees' remains in Mongolia started in 1994 and more or less ended in 1999. The possible resumption of the bone collection work will be discussed if there is new information about a burial place of the deceased internees. The government used to organize memorial trips to Mongolia for members of bereaved families, but a trip has not taken place since 2019 due to the decline in the number of participants, among other reasons.
Japan Times
21-05-2025
- Japan Times
‘Crosspoint' can't quite find its target
Japan isn't known for being friendly to foreign film productions: Even big-budget Hollywood projects with Japan-centric stories are often shot elsewhere due to red tape, among other reasons. Donie Ordiales, a Filipino director and long-time resident in Japan, nonetheless found the ways and means to film his patchily plotted thriller 'Crosspoint' here and release it in the Philippines late last year. The film was a box-office hit, with the casting of local TV star Carlo Aquino drawing fans. The story — a washed-up Filipino actor and a broke Japanese businessman team up to capture a creepy serial killer — would seem to lend itself to buddy-movie comedy, but everyone plays it totally straight to occasionally ludicrous effect. Aquino is Manuel Hidalgo, an actor who was once big in the 1990s but is now hard up for roles and in need of money for the medical bills of his pregnant wife. (Given his boyish looks, he must have been barely out of the cradle when he first rose to stardom a quarter century ago.) Arriving in Japan, Manuel finds employment as a singer in a Filipino club where his Japanese audience is unaware of his one-time fame. Facing deportation because he is not working with a proper visa, he journeys to a small pub in rural Nagano Prefecture but finds it locked and its Pinoy proprietor nowhere to be found. She is, we already know, dead inside the pub at the hands of a killer (Sho Ikushima), whom Manuel catches a glimpse of as he skulks away. The actor has no idea, however, that this stranger is responsible for the crime. Later that night, without money for a hotel, he seeks shelter in an izakaya (Japanese pub), where he strikes up a conversation with a businessman, Shigeru Yamaguchi ('Shogun' star Takehiro Hira). Fluent in English, Shigeru commiserates with Manuel's problems and confesses his own: His business is bankrupt and he is deep in debt. Then, Manuel catches a glimpse of a news broadcast about a local murder and realizes he has seen the suspect. Hearing this, Shigeru has a light bulb moment and suggests he and Manuel team up to catch the killer and claim the substantial reward. Seeing this, rightly, as a harebrained idea, Manuel suggests that they go to the cops instead. But Shigeru is both persistent and persuasive and they embark on their big adventure, the trembly Manuel armed with a baseball bat and the grimly determined Shigeru with a bow and arrows. We're told he's an expert archer, but seeing these two flailing through the woods in the dark, I couldn't help but think of Harry and Lloyd, the bumbling duo from the classic Farrelly brothers' comedy 'Dumb and Dumber.' When the heroes encounter the killer, the ensuing action scenes generate a dark, chaotic impact, if with the obvious assistance of stunt actors and quick cuts that blur who is doing what to whom. Action aside, the film is realistic about both the vagaries of show business in the Philippines and the hardscrabble lives many Filipino entertainers lead in Japan, where clubs run by their compatriots often close without warning, leaving their hapless employees in the lurch. But the story drags in plot developments, such as Shigeru's opposition to the singing career of his talented daughter Mayuko (Kei Kurosawa), reminiscent of a standard-issue family melodrama. For all its entertaining and insightful moments, 'Crosspoint' is finally at cross purposes to itself.
20-05-2025
Chiikawa Goes Global: 'Kawaii' Characters Make It to the Top
Chiikawa, a contraction of the Japanese phrase nanka chiisakute kawaii yatsu , which means something like 'so small and cute,' refers to the adorable animal characters that appear in a manga series launched by the illustrator Nagano on Twitter (now X) in 2017. The series, reflecting her image of an ideal lifestyle, grew so popular that she launched a dedicated account in January 2020. Their spread is linked to an explosion in the number of yuru-kyara , as Japanese call supercute mascot characters. This was triggered in part by the explosion in social media and image-sharing tools from around 2011 onward, as illustrators posted their character and manga creations on Line, Pixiv, Twitter, and other online properties. The debut of the Line Creators Market in May of 2014 gave creators a 50% share in the revenues from the sales of digital stickers featuring their characters, which users purchased to decorate their messages to one another. This encouraged even more artists to submit their creations, in the beginnings of what is now known as the 'creator economy.' The incredible popularity of Gudetama, a character released in 2013 by Sanrio, is a perfect example. After being posted to social media, it was widely shared in the years to follow. By January of 2018, as seen in the chart below, the official Gudetama Twitter account reached 1 million followers. As the COVID-19 pandemic caused lockdowns around the world, the number of creators participating in digital spaces skyrocketed, fueling the growth of the Line sticker business. In 2021, LINE reported ¥100 billion in sales. The top ten creators took in an average of ¥1.18 billion from their creations, while 154 creators made more than ¥100 million. But with 3.9 million total participants, not even 0.01% are able to earn a sustainable income. Becoming the Artist of Her Era Nagano distinguished herself early on in the fiercely competitive sticker-creator business. She released a string of characters, including Jibun Tsukkomi Kuma (Joke Bear), Pagu-san, Burikko Usagi (Too Cute Bunny), and more, hitting the top spot on the Line Creator Marketplace numerous times. When she began drawing Chiikawa, she was already positioned as a top creator, with 330,000 followers on Twitter. How does a stand-alone character gain more popularity than those that appear in high-budget, heavily marketed video games and anime? All of Nagano's creations have a common denominator: they are caricatures, a form of satire once widely seen in newspaper cartoons and other mass media. In a Twitter post titled 'Living together with cats,' Nagano writes how 'Both move independently, from time to time coming into my view. What happiness!' In another post titled 'Ice cream manjū ,' she captures the moment of biting into the sweet with the observation, 'plump vanilla; sticky bean paste,' painting a picture in the reader's mind. In a way, her work resembles illustrated haiku poetry. Nagano also shows her genius in capturing the happiness of everyday moments in single-panel manga. In the world of Chiikawa, the characters are engaged in a kind of survival. They are small and fragile creatures who come together to savor tiny moments of joy amid a relentless cycle of eating, working, and sleeping every day. But the reason the series resonates so deeply among so many is because it doesn't settle for whimsical fantasy. It serves as a quiet message of encouragement to those facing the harsh realities of modern life. From Minor Sensation to Major Hit Nagano released Chiikawa Line stickers in July of 2020. In March 2021, Line named her as the monthly MVP in its Top Creator category, which recognizes top stickers and emojis based on number of downloads, usage frequency, and buzz. From the press release for the Chiikawa Restaurant in Tokyo's Ikebukuro. (Courtesy The Guest Café and Diner; © Nagano/Chiikawa Committee) To capitalize on this momentum, Nagano partnered with Spiralcute, a company specializing in the licensing of character merchandise. Together they launched a full-scale entry into the character business, opening an online store and releasing a range of official products. In April of 2022, an anime adaptation began airing as one segment of Fuji TV's Mezamashi terebi morning program, cementing Chiikawa's popularity. This can be seen in the explosive growth of the number of followers on Chiikawa's official X account. 2020: 10,000 → 400,000 2021: 400,000 → 800,000 2022: 800,000 → 1.7 million 2023: 1.7 million → 2.8 million As you can see, Chiikawa has built an incredible following over the past four years; by the end of 2023, it reached a level comparable to megahits like the anime series Demon Slayer (2.94 million followers), Pokémon (2.34 million), and One Piece (2.06 million). As of April 2025, the account has almost 4 million followers. It goes to show that Chiikawa is an all-star among Japanese characters. It's important to remember that Chiikawa isn't based on a manga or anime. It emerged organically, from the daily posts of single-panel illustrations and short stories on social media. The mass media has long treated the internet as the periphery of pop culture, but in recent years creator-driven platforms like the video-oriented sites Niconico, TikTok, and YouTube have transformed the media landscape, paving new ways for amateurs to compete on the same playing field as seasoned professionals. Chiikawa symbolizes this shift. Chiikawa may have emerged from the fringes, but it went on to win prestigious awards chosen by professionals, including the SNS Buzzword Award (2022), the Japan Character Award (2022 and again in 2024), and the Grand Prize of the Japan Cartoonists Association Award (2024). There's no question about it: The fringe has overtaken the mainstream. Huge Popularity in China Chiikawa sounds cute and cuddly, but it's a power player in the world of Japanese characters, representing a massive franchise in its own right. An overseas merchandising initiative kicked off in March of 2024. In China, where Chiikawa gained popularity ahead of other nations, a great deal of pirated merchandise fills the marketplace alongside officially licensed products. In order to better compete there, Spiralcute decided to partner with Miniso, a major Chinese variety store chain. They opened the first official Chiikawa pop-up shop in Shanghai at the end of March 2024; in just three days, sales reached some 8 million yuan, or over a million dollars. At one point, the line of customers grew 7,000 people long, prompting local police to break up the crowd. But the frenzy continued, quickly spreading to Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and South Korea. Additional pop-up shops in New York and Las Vegas enjoyed huge success as well. In 2024, Chiikawa proved popular enough to enter the top 10 best-selling intellectual property franchises in China. At Minoso's 2024 Super IP Awards, it was honored alongside globally renowned franchises such as Harry Potter and Disney characters. Chiikawa no longer belongs only to Japan, but to the whole world. Apps: a New Frontier Key to Chiikawa's success is its constant presence. In the first three years after launching the account, Nagano only had 200 days when she didn't post. New content is released on a near-daily basis, and the anime is showing on TV. And then there are the numerous events and collaborations—it's almost impossible to walk the streets in Japan these days without a glimpse of Chiikawa. Chiikawa merchandise released in collaboration with the MLB season opener held in Tokyo on March 7, 2025, at Tokyo Skytree Town. (© Kazuki Oishi/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect) The combination of an easy-to-understand take on the world and constant updates is what differentiates Chiikawa from previous generations of cute characters. Today frequency and high visibility are the norm, indispensable assets in expanding new character content franchises. And now, Chiikawa is expanding into new media. The mobile game app Chiikawa Pocket ( Chiipoke ) came out in March of 2025, racking up 3 million downloads in its first week. Having conquered social media, televised anime, and merchandise, Chiikawa is breaking new ground in the mobile gaming space. It's a big new stage for the now-international star. (Originally published in Japanese on April 28, 2025. Banner photo: A Chiikawa-themed pop-up store opens in Shanghai, China, on March 29, 2024. © Xinhua/ Kyōdō News Images.)
