January 28, 2025
TOKYO – The chairman and president of Fuji Television Network, Inc. (Fuji TV) both resigned Monday amid the scandal involving the now-retired entertainer Masahiro Nakai.
Shuji Kano, the chairman of Fuji TV and its parent company, Fuji Media Holdings, Inc, stepped down, as did Koichi Minato, Fuji TV president and an executive managing director of Fuji Media Holdings.
A board meeting to discuss the problem was held at Fuji TV on Monday afternoon, followed by a press conference from 4 p.m.
“I am resigning today, for I feel painfully my responsibility for what happened,” Minato said at the press conference. “I am also one of the people to be investigated by the third-party committee. I am ready to fully cooperate.”
Minato said he felt responsible for Fuji TV’s not questioning Nakai sufficiently about the case and letting him continue to appear on its TV shows.
“I would like to apologize to the woman concerned, as we have not been able to fully care for her due to our insufficient sense of human rights,” Kano said. “The responsibility for the matter is fully on us, the top management. I will resign today from my posts at Fuji Media Holdings and Fuji TV.”
Kenji Shimizu, the executive vice president of Fuji Media Holdings, will become the company’s president on Tuesday.
Also present at the press conference were Osamu Kanemitsu, the president of Fuji Media Holdings, and Ryunosuke Endo, vice chairman of Fuji TV.
The third-party committee was set up on Thursday and is meant to be highly independent. The company decided that the committee would submit its investigation report around the end of March.
Weekly magazines reported in December that a woman was subjected to unwanted behavior by Nakai after a dinner party at his home, and that a Fuji TV employee might have been involved in organizing the dinner.
With regard to the treatment of the woman and the possible involvement of the Fuji TV employee, the company said at the press conference Monday that at first the information was held by only a few executives and employees to protect the woman’s privacy. However, Fuji has so far uncovered no information about the involvement of the employee in question, it said.
Fuji TV held a press conference on Jan. 17 as well but was harshly criticized for limiting the participants to selected reporters and refusing to let TV stations film it. There are also suspicions regarding the objectivity of Fuji TV’s in-house investigations into the case, and many companies have pulled their commercials.
Minato said at another press conference that he learned about the matter in June 2023, immediately after it happened, but a Fuji TV variety show hosted by Nakai continued to be broadcast.
Nakai admitted to the issue on Jan. 9, and all the TV and radio shows he had regularly appeared on subsequently canceled his appearances. He announced his retirement from the entertainment industry on Thursday.