In Japan, female voice performers are incredibly popular as idols and celebrities despite only displaying their oral talents in their work for anime series and movies. Some are able to carve out lucrative sidelines as models, singers, and gravure idols. If they have the looks and following for this, it is usually apparent pretty quickly…

A Japanese refugee. It sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s not. In fact, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that dozens of Japanese citizens receive refugee status around the world every year. And one recent case has generated headlines. Two Japanese women have received refugee status in Canada due to discrimination…

The veteran voice actor Toru Furuya may well be 70 years old and something of a legend in the industry, having provided voices for such series as Conan, Gundam, Dragon Ball, and One Piece, but his career and status is currently facing ruin due to a sex scandal. Furuya married his second wife in 1985…

A male teacher at an elementary school in the prefecture of Gifu has been punished for saving and possessing child porn on his phone. The unnamed 33-year-old educator was suspended for four months, starting May 23, according to Japanese media reports. The school is located in the small city of Kani in the landlocked prefecture….

Yesterday we shared the news about an elementary school teacher suspended (but allowed to keep his job) for downloading child porn. Now comes a story involving another educator up to no good in Japan. A male teacher in his forties has been arrested for taking videos up girls’ skirts in escalators in Tokyo. The man…

Japan’s public broadcaster has to appeal to a wide section of the nation with its programming. The show Makaizo no yoru (Crazy Modification Night) is primarily aimed at engineer-type guys who love making and customizing stuff. But did the family-friendly broadcaster sneak a porn subtext into the latest edition? This one featured three teams of…

Tech is going to solve all our problems, right? Tech — and especially AI — is the Band-Aid, the panacea. Or so we are led to believe, and so the government certainly seems to believe. We wrote before that the Japanese government is turning to artificial intelligence to fix the chronically declining birth rate, and…

Shinjuku police have arrested a 22-year-old in Kabukicho host for tricking a 17-year-old girl out of around ¥400,000 in cash. Rai Akama is a former actor and was in contact with the girl after she came to see one of his stage productions last summer. He invited her to his host club and, so that…

More bad news about compensated dating now as the moral panic over papakatsu continues. Papakatsu is a kind of newish buzzword to describe compensated dating that involves an older man and younger woman (though in practice, compensated dating often meant such sugar daddy relationships regardless of terminology). Following media stories about female fraudsters and even…

In today’s social media–driven world, it can feel like a new meme and “enjo” scandal appear every day to rage-bait us into clicks and views. One of the more recent examples in Japan was a video in January of a hostess and a client at an expensive sushi restaurant, arguing with the owner about their…