From high salaries to hush money… Legendary entertainment reporter Toshio Ishikawa reveals the “money situation” in the entertainment industry.

High salaries for entertainment reporters

Toshio Ishikawa, 79, was an entertainment reporter for Nippon Television’s “The Wide” show. He is still active in reporting and appearing on the radio, and is still the oldest person still active in the field, still seeking scoops.

After dropping out of college, Ishikawa joined the movie company Shochiku. This is where his life in the entertainment industry began.

I was assigned to the advertising department, where I met many stars and actresses. I was especially indebted to Shima Iwashita. But Shima-san still misunderstands me, and calls me a ‘crybaby. She said that I followed her on location and cried, saying, “I want to go home. Shima-san told Aki Yashiro-san and others who co-starred with me about it, so word spread that Ishikawa was a crier. That is absolutely not true.

After working at Shochiku for about four years, Ishikawa switched jobs to the editorial department of the women’s weekly “Shukan Josei” (Weekly Woman). Here, he became a scoop reporter.

My monthly salary at Shochiku was about 10,000 yen or 12,000 yen,” he said. At that time, if you wrote a four-page article for a weekly magazine, you were paid 50,000 yen. So when I entered the company because of the lure of money, I was paid about 50,000 yen more per month than my colleagues. In addition to that, I spent more than 70,000 yen on expenses. We went to Ginza a lot, and it was fun.”

Later, he was introduced to television by his friend Masaru Nashimoto. He was scouted by a TV station as an entertainment reporter, but his salary situation is …….

At the time, I was working about 170 hours of overtime a month, so I was getting about three times as much as the people in the company. When I offered the TV station twice that annual salary, they readily agreed. I thought to myself, “If this is the way it’s going to be, I should have asked for more (laughs). They said they would pay me an advance, but I didn’t know how much. I asked for 20 million yen, but in the end I got 6 million yen. But it was still a large sum, so I immediately set up my own company.

A “bundle of money” for scoop busting

There was a reason why TV stations paid entertainment reporters so much.

The TV stations were very kind in those days,” he said. Case reporters did not meet their subjects many times, but entertainment reporters met celebrities many times. They told us that reporters should not feel humiliated in such situations, so they gave us a raise in pay.

In the background, wads of cash were also being flown around to “squash scoops. Ishikawa speaks from firsthand experience about money that is hidden from the public eye.

When I was a reporter, celebrities and production companies offered me more money than when I was a reporter. I was covering a big-name actor’s problems with women, and the actor got down on his knees and said, ‘Please don’t give it to me. At that time, I wanted to stop him. Then the manager put some money on the table. I decided at that moment that I was going to do it. Of course, I didn’t take a penny. But I was disappointed to think that this is how they stopped me, and that there were reporters who stopped me, too.

One production company, which had never touched Ishikawa’s money, threw a bag full of bills into his cab as it was closing on his way home. 100,000 yen was common in the bag, but he quickly threw it back. …… I’m not sure how many people are involved in this.

There is a lot of money going on behind the scenes in the entertainment industry. It is only because Ishikawa has been in the entertainment industry for a long time that he seems to have been able to see many aspects of it.

In the “Entertainment Reporter Channel” of FRIDAY Digital on YouTube, legendary entertainment reporter Toshio Ishikawa, who has covered the entertainment industry for a long time, talks about money, the “dark side” of scoops, and the truth behind Match and Akina’s “golden screen press conference. The story is about money and the “dark side” of scoops.