Yoshimoto Yakuza Connection Causing Problems

[Mulboyne]

[floatr][/floatr]Yomiuri: Yoshimoto feud no laughing matter
Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., an entertainment company that manages a number of popular comedians, is being shaken by an internal feud involving the management and a shareholder aligned with the founder. Major shareholder Masa Hayashi, the daughter of the late former Chairman Shonosuke Hayashi, disagrees with the management's policy...Hayashi is expected to intensify her offensive at a shareholders meeting on June 26. The...dispute sprang up during a scandal involving Kausu Nakata, a manzai comic storyteller [align=right] who belongs to Yoshimoto. Speaking in Shukan Shincho magazine's April 5 issue, Hayashi accused Nakata of being acquainted with a former yakuza boss and using the connection to influence Yoshimoto's management. Nakata retaliated in Shukan Gendai magazine, saying it was Hayashi who tried to ride the coattails of the former yakuza chief...Later, Nakata confessed to being an acquaintance of the former yakuza boss in a letter to Shukan Gendai. NHK canceled a program featuring Nakata...Fans of Yoshimoto's comedians are far from happy. Toshizo Nanba, who has written a novel based on the company's history, said: "It's no laughing matter for a company that sells laughs and dreams to be suspected of shady business relations with yakuza. In fact, it's a tragedy"...more...

[dimwit]

Yoshimoto was essentially founded by gangsters. A quick perusal of their corporate history tends to be rather vague on their founding fathers.

I'd also be curious as to how their present employment practices measure up to labor codes.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Japan's Biggest Talent Agency Gets Caught Up in Yakuza Insurance Fraud

At least 10 comedians from Yoshimoto Kogyo, Japan's biggest talent agency, have been caught up in a scheme by a yakuza gangster that defrauded Japan's public health insurance system of at least $1 million (￥120 million).

By far the best-known agency in Japan, Yoshimoto Kogyo inked a cooperation pact with CAA (Creative Arts Agency) in 2008, was taken over by a consortium of local media companies, including the major TV nets, in 2009, and this year signed a content deal with Netflix.

The comedians from the agency claim they were told they could get free massages at orthopedic clinics and had no knowledge of their insurance details being used for fraudulent claims.

"We believe the performers' version of events is true and that they knew nothing about what was happening," a Yoshimoto Kogyo staffer told The Hollywood Reporter. "We are cooperating fully with the police investigation."

[Coligny]

Were do you find the strenght to follow this kind of news...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Were do you find the strenght to follow this kind of news...

I don't. It pops up in my Yahoo News feed.

[matsuki]

Were do you find the strenght to follow this kind of news...

I don't. It poops on my Yahoo News feed.

FTFY

I guess this is a positive move...the more arrests made, the more of a deterrent it is for others to follow suit.

[Samurai_Jerk]

The Yakuza Are Running Japan’s Hollywood

Japan’s entertainment industry is infested with organized crime and despite crackdowns on “yakuza Hollywood” nothing much seems to change. For example, last month 10 comedians from the colossal Yoshimoto Kogyo talent agency were caught up (innocently, they said) in a yakuza insurance fraud scheme involving, ahem, free massages. The scam reportedly netted over a million dollars. Who will be prosecuted remains murky. And that’s business as usual.

What is unusual is for a yakuza boss to break the code of silence and discuss how the talent agency he worked for intimidated its stars and the media, even using other yakuza to get the job done.

As reported in The Daily Beast previously, when the first Japanese woman to win the Miss International title in over five decades, Ikumi Yoshimatsu, refused to go to work for any mafia-connected talent agency, she found out that standing up for the right thing is a sure way to get knocked off your throne and be ostracized from the Japanese entertainment world.

The reign of the talent agencies is severe and oppressive—only recently did a Japanese court rule that it was unacceptable for an agency to forbid a female idol to have a boyfriend. Her agency had even sued her for daring to have a personal life.

In the Yoshimatsu case, in December 2013 she and her lawyer held a press conference at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan to explain the sequence of events that led to her filing criminal charges and a restraining order against one of Japan’s most powerful talent agency executives.

Her alleged stalker was Genichi Taniguchi, also known as Motokazu, the president of Pearl Dash and an executive at K-Dash, one of Japan’s biggest talent agencies, which ranks among its luminaries Ken Watanabe of The Last Samurai and Inception.

According to the beauty queen Yoshimatsu and her lawyer, who have substantial documentation, including video and audio evidence, her problems began before she was crowned Miss International in October 2012, while still being handled by a smaller talent agency.