Former composer Yuko Utsunomiya made a shocking confession by revealing her real name and face: “I was invited to a drinking party by Hitoshi Matsumoto. | FRIDAY DIGITAL

Former composer Yuko Utsunomiya made a shocking confession by revealing her real name and face: “I was invited to a drinking party by Hitoshi Matsumoto.

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Utsunomiya, prepared for a lawsuit, decided to confess his real name and face to the public. I want to correct the bad customs of the entertainment industry.”

The trial of “Downtown” star Matsumoto Hitoshi (60) over allegations of sexual assault will begin on March 28.

The issue is being discussed daily by commentators and attorneys on the wide-ranging news media. The question is: “Was there sexual assault?” Did the young comedians “offer” the women to Matsumoto?” “Should Matsumoto sue the anonymous witnesses?” …… There are a number of points of contention, but a woman in her position has agreed to testify to the reality of the “drinking parties held by Matsumoto and his friends,” using her real name and face. She is Yuko Utsunomiya, 47, a former composer and representative of the political group “Jiyu no Kai.

Utsunomiya was born in the Kansai region. When she moved to Tokyo to pursue her career in music, she was invited to a drinking party centering on Matsumoto. That was about 20 years ago, in the early 2000s.

At the time, I was working part-time as a hostess while continuing my music career, and one of my hostess colleagues was gathering girls for a drinking party with Koji Imada (57) and his friends. The place was a private room at an izakaya in Ebisu, and there was no charge for the girls to attend.

Those present were Mr. Imada, Yu Shinagawa (51) of “Shinagawa Shoji,” San Matamata (56), interviewer Yamashita (55), then of “Jarism,” and Mr. Matsumoto. The participants other than Mr. Matsumoto were informed in advance, but his participation was kept under wraps. I was surprised at this method, the same as the drinking party reported in the Weekly Bunshun, saying, ‘We’ve been having drinking parties in the same pattern for a long time.

Matsumoto and his party in the early 2000s, when Utsunomiya attended the drinking party.

The seats were arranged around Matsumoto, and Utsunomiya recalls, “I felt that all the participating members were looking out for him.

It seemed he was on his way back from watching PRIDE, a popular mixed martial arts tournament at the time, and the men talked about the match the whole time. The girls in their twenties couldn’t understand what they were talking about, and all of them were in a scene. I couldn’t keep up with the conversation at all, and the party was not very exciting.

The names of Kiyoshi Tamura, Heath Healing, Igor Bobchanchin, and Ken Shamrock were not a hit with the 20-something hostesses, but the group still went to the after-party.

Shinagawa-san drove them to a members-only bar in Shibuya. At the after-party, Mr. Imada, the organizer of the party, was very attentive to everyone and actively encouraged conversation. At the same time I was impressed that he had his favorite girl sit next to him and was chummy with her body. On the other hand, Shinagawa-san seemed to be bored at the after-party and was fiddling with his cell phone the whole time, texting with someone.”

After a reasonable amount of talk about who Utsunomiya looked like and who he did not look like, the second meeting ended. She says she “still remembers clearly” the words that Matsumoto said to her there.

Matsumoto’s closing words were, ‘I wonder who will make me happy today ……? It was. Silence reigned for a while, and Matsumoto-san ended up taking no one home. The girls did not get cab fare, and the junior comedians took the girls home. Those were the days of the “Galapagos” and cell phones were not confiscated in advance as reported in Bunshun.

There were five female participants, including myself, but perhaps there were no women of Ms. Matsumoto’s type. What was very disconcerting, however, was that everyone was unusually attentive to Mr. Matsumoto. I could sense that all of the junior comedians were tense and on tenterhooks with Matsumoto-san’s every move. Comedians themselves sometimes make jokes about it, but I felt that the comedy world is a very tight-knit society. No one seemed to be able to give an opinion to Mr. Matsumoto.

Did it gradually escalate from then on to a drinking party like the Bunshun report? I was a composer, but if I had been an aspiring talent or a fledgling idol, I would have thought, ‘If I make Mr. Matsumoto unhappy, he might dry up in the entertainment business. If I didn’t spend the night, I might lose my future as an entertainer. ‘ I think that would be very scary.”

Utsunomiya in his 20s when he was invited to a drinking party

At the “Sanyutei Tomu Kai Me Kinsho Tei Mando Shin Uchi Promotional Show – Mando Fest in Nippon Budokan” held in Tokyo on January 21, Hachimitsu Jiro (49) of “Tokyo Dynamite” said during a story , “Please forgive Machan. All of us have done that much,” he said. Utsunomiya also responded to this remark.

He said, “As with the Bunshun report and what I have experienced, there is still a tendency in the entertainment industry to treat women as objects. They call women who only want to have sex with them ‘kakitare’ and …… I hope they will take it up more and more as a social issue. The same is true for the sexual assault of the late Janie Kitagawa, and I would like to continue to work and communicate, even if it is only in a small way, so that young talented people can be evaluated fairly for their abilities without having to flatter those in power.

Is Utsunomiya’s confession true, and how will her appeal be heard? The Public Relations Office of the Corporate Communications Division of Yoshimoto Kogyo Holdings Co,

The Corporate Communications Office of Yoshimoto Kogyo Holdings Co.

The only response from the Corporate Communications Office of Yoshimoto Kogyo Holdings was, “We will refrain from responding to individual interviews.

We asked Satoru Fukumoto, an attorney at Kisaragi Law Office, for his opinion.

He said, “I don’t know whether there was consent to sexual intercourse or not. The law has been revised in the wake of last year’s sexual assault case involving Johnny’s, and it is now recognized that the victim, who is in a position or situation where he or she cannot say no because of his or her influence based on economic or social status, may be made to worry about being disadvantaged, in other words, because of hierarchical or power relationships, and it may be assumed that he or she consented to sexual intercourse or other sexual acts. In other words, it is now considered to be a crime of non-consensual sexual intercourse if the victim is in a position or situation where he or she cannot say no due to hierarchical or power relationships. For example, this is a case in which an aspiring celebrity is made to believe that if she refuses, she may not be able to stay in the entertainment industry.

This is exactly what Mr. Utsunomiya is worried about, and the entertainment industry is in urgent need of reform, not to mention waiting for a verdict, which is expected to take two to three years.

Utsunomiya
  • Photography and text by Yuria Fukatsuki

    Graduated from the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Keio University. Representative of the Fukatsuki Office. She writes for numerous media and also works as an actress, model, belly dancer, and FM radio personality. She is also actively involved in animal welfare activities and produced her own TV program "Animal Welfare, Living in Harmony with the Earth" for TV Kanagawa.

  • Photo Toshihiro Nakaikawa

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