<figure id="attachment_224827" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 1440px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-224827"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="adca7986"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/01/jpp00914947.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-224827" class="wp-caption-text">Keiichi Onizawa was found to have passed away on January 12. He was a pioneer in the field of entertainment reporters.</figcaption></figure>
 Entertainment reporter Toshio Ishikawa&#8217;s &#8220;Behind the scenes of that event: &#8230;&#8230;
Keiichi Onizawa, the eldest male entertainment reporter in Japan, passed away on September 5 last year due to old age, we learned on January 12.
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I met him for the first time at the Ofuna Film Studio during the Shochiku era. The first time I met him was at the Ofuna Studios during the Shochiku era, when I was still in the Shochiku Advertising Department.
 He was 89 years old.
He came running into the studio. Mr. Onizawa had transferred from Sports Nippon to the Hochi Shimbun. I remember how powerful he was as a reporter. I asked him what it was about.
 &#8220;I can&#8217;t tell you.
That&#8217;s all I could say. My boss was not there, so I asked him to wait, but the content was about Mr. Kiyoshi Atsumi&#8217;s marriage issue.
Mr. Onizawa waited for Mr. Atsumi to return, and directly hit him at the entrance of the studio. I guess he was able to get confirmation from him. The next day&#8217;s paper carried a big headline, &#8220;Kiyoshi Atsumi gets married.
The scoop led to Mr. Atsumi getting married at Izumo Taisha Shrine in Shimane Prefecture in March of 1969. After that, she and Mr. Onizawa did not have much of a relationship.
Then, Mr. Onizawa became an entertainment reporter. He was one of the pioneers of entertainment reporters.
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I was also invited by the late Masaru Nashimoto to become an entertainment reporter. When I first became a reporter, Mr. Onizawa and Mr. Nashimoto were on bad terms. They must have had completely opposite attitudes toward production.
Mr. Nashimoto passed away, and Tsubasa Fukuoka and Jinichiro Sudo also passed away. They were the senior members of the group who were earning unbelievable salaries during the good days of TV wide shows. But I guess I&#8217;m not that different from them (?). I&#8217;m not that different from them.
The only ones left are my senior colleague Tadaaki Maeda and me.
It may sound like a lie, but the big executive at the TV station that decided to use me said, &#8220;I&#8217;m not a reporter.
 It sounds like a lie, but a big executive at the TV station that was going to use me said, &#8220;We&#8217;ll pay you a decent fee, because we can&#8217;t conduct interviews if our entertainment reporters are demeaned in front of celebrities.
So we decided to sign the contract.
That&#8217;s how I decided to sign the contract, but even after that, I never heard about the other people&#8217;s income. I guess that&#8217;s how out of the ordinary everything was in those days.
I went on more than ten business trips to Hawaii to follow Shintaro Katsu, who had been arrested for cocaine, and each time the director who went with me was paid about 1.5 million yen on a provisional basis. The cost of lodging, local coordinators, and film crews were billed to me. I was told years later that the staff had to settle all the provisional payments themselves, which must have been incredibly time-consuming (laughs).
Because of his relationship with Mr. Nashimoto, Mr. Onizawa would continue to be increasingly uncommunicative. We had a strange relationship where we would meet each other at press conferences, but we would only greet each other and not say a word to each other. Of course, Mr. Nashimoto, who was the reason why he stopped talking to Mr. Onizawa, did not talk to him either.
The last time I saw Mr. Onizawa was in July 2002, at a party held by singer Taro Yamada to commemorate the publication of his book, &#8220;Shura no Toki Seishun no Toki: Utama Nishikawa no Oyakata (Yukio Nishikawa, Master of the Song World).
There were entertainment reporters and others at the round table, and everyone was concerned about Mr. Onizawa&#8217;s health. They were all concerned about Mr. Onizawa&#8217;s health, as he had already disappeared from the wide screen by then.
The world of entertainment reporters had been dominated by &#8220;Oni no Onizawa,&#8221; and had been enlivened by Mr. Nashimoto and Mr. Fukuoka. The entertainment reporter world had been enlivened by the likes of Mr. Nashimoto and Mr. Fukuoka. And then there are the TV wide shows that have made a business out of scandals involving star actors and popular people.
That form has changed drastically, and entertainment news on TV has become boring. This is probably because TV stations are no longer willing to show the &#8220;other side of the story&#8221; in the name of their &#8220;front page&#8221; business.
We are now back to the days when entertainment news is only reported by magazines such as Friday, Bunshun, Shincho, and women&#8217;s magazines. The news of Onizawa&#8217;s death made me realize how entertainment news should be.
I pray that he may rest in peace. Oh, Gassho&#8230;.

 Born in Tokyo in 1946. Born in Tokyo in 1946, he has a unique career path: from Shochiku Advertising Department to reporter for women's magazines to entertainment reporter. After working on "The Wide" and "Information Live Myaneya" (both on Nippon Television Network Corporation), he is currently a regular contributor to "Mentai Wide" (Fukuoka Broadcasting System), "Sumataman" (Yomiuri Television), and Rainbow Town FM.

 Toshio Ishikawa (entertainment reporter)

 Jiji Press Photo

 Keiichi Onizawa, a pioneering entertainment reporter, was found dead on January 12. Veteran entertainment reporter Toshio Ishikawa discusses Onizawa's accomplishments and the current state of the entertainment media....

Toshio Ishikawa, reporter, thinks about the state of entertainment news after the death of Keiichi Onizawa

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