K-1 fighter Masato (27) and actress Yazawa Shin (25) announced yesterday that they got married on Sunday. They made the announcement in front of about 150 reporters and 20 TV cameras. Though they had been dating for six years to the day, it was the first time they had been photographed together. They chose to register their marriage in February after consulting with several fortune tellers, and Sunday in particular as it was an auspicious “tai-an” day in the shinto calendar. Masato’s next fight is in the April final qualifiers for the World Max tournament. The middleweight, who has a 43-5-2 record, said, “If I lose, people will say it’s because I got married. So I have to win!” He was the first Japanese to take the world crown in 2003. His good looks have also earned him movie and TV roles. Yazawa, whose given name Shin means “heart”, made her acting debut in 1997’s hit movie “Bounce Ko Gals”. The couple will wait until after the World Max finals in September before having a wedding ceremony.
• Mangaka Sugi Emiko died on Friday of stomach cancer at a Yokohama hospital. She was 47. She made her debut in 1977 and was known for such works as “Gettchu” and “Adam & Eve no Houteishiki”. According to the publisher Shogakkan, her manga sold over 18 million copies.
From Goldfinger 99 to Diet member?! 
No chances are being taken with the security for this weekend’s super showbiz wedding between actress 
Yesterday, actress 
At 52, actress Akiyoshi Kumiko can still get her man, or should that be boy. The actress famous for her off-the-wall comments revealed yesterday that she re-married her second ex-husband last year. At 26, the Japanese-American graphic creator, named only as A-san, is a year younger than her son from her first marriage. Their marriage at the end of 2004 lasted less than a year. But at a PR event for her latest theatrical production yesterday, Akiyoshi told reporters that they got hitched again a year ago. She admitted that the whole thing was a bit embarrassing for her and she had hoped to keep it secret. She said their first marriage had been based on “passion and instinct”. But when she discovered soon afterwards that her mother had cancer, her priorities changed drastically. A-san supported her even after their split and they decided to get back together shortly before Akiyoshi’s mother died in February 2006. One of the more eccentric characters in Japanese showbiz, Akiyoshi was pregnant when she married for the first time, in 1979 to composer Iwaku Shigeru (57), making her a showbiz pioneer of the term “dekichatta-kon” (shotgun wedding). They had one son but divorced in 1989. In her 34-year career Akiyoshi has appeared in dozens of movies and over 100 TV dramas. She published a book of nude photos in 1991.
The multi-talented 
Diminuitive funny man Neko Hiroshi (29) is engaged to be married. During a press conference at his management agency last night the 147cm-tall comedian told reporters his new fiancee is the same age but 12cm taller. He said she works in social welfare. Real name Takizaki Kuniaki, he started out in comedy in 2001 using the name Tarantula. He went through dozens of name changes before settling on Neko (Cat) Hiroshi, despite the fact that he is allergic to cats. Needless to say, given his comedy image as a hyperactive feline, he described his fiancee as looking like a”Siamese cat”, and he proposed to her last autumn by asking her to “Please be my owner.” Her family were said to be unhappy about the fact that he performed topless and the pair even split up as a result. But he changed to wearing a t-shirt, they got back together, and now plan to get hitched within the year. Though the announcement only came yesterday, the couple actually got engaged on December 10, the same day as actress 
NTV announcer Ohsugi Kimie jumped to her death from the balcony of her 8-storey Tokyo apartment on Friday, less than four months after becoming a mother. Married twice, the first time from 1996 to 2001 and again in 2002, she became the oldest TV announcer to have a baby at the age of 43 and had been on maternity leave. Her second husband, ten years younger, is an employee of a major advertising firm. Ohsugi was said to be suffering from fibromyalgia – a chronic painful condition characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain and fatigue – since having her baby boy. The condition had been worsening to the point where she often couldn’t write or hold a telephone, though she did leave a suicide note. She had a hospital appointment on the morning of her suicide and had earlier expressed her intention to return to work in the spring.
Director Suo Masayuki (50) expressed his anger at the Japanese legal system to the foreign media this week. Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents Club in downtown Tokyo, the man best known for the 1995 hit romantic comedy “Shall We Dance?” talked about his first movie in 11 years, “Soredemo Boku Wa Yattenai” (I Just Didn’t Do It). Starring Kase Ryo (32), who was also at the luncheon event, it’s a far more serious movie, telling the story of a young man, Kaneko Teppei, who is arrested and tried for groping a schoolgirl on a crowded train. A common story in recent years, the catch is that Kaneko is innocent. This fact is lost in the standard police procedure of coercing a detainee to sign a written confession in return for leniency, a process supported by not a few Japanese judges. Kaneko refuses and becomes a victim of a legal system where over 90% of cases result in a guilty verdict. As Suo has said before on the media, the number is an anomaly by international standards. He said: “Normally the ideas for my films come to me as wonderful discoveries of life; things that take me by surprise, that delight and inspire. This time, what I discovered was a sense of outrage within myself. What resulted is not so much a movie I wanted to make as a movie I simply had to make.”
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