Minor talento Sakamoto Issei (36) was stabbed on Sunday morning following a car park argument. While parking his car at a neighborhod supermarket in Inage, Chiba Prefecture, he almost hit another car. This led to an argument with a man described as 60 years old an unemployed (often a euphemism for a yakuza). The man punched Sakamoto and stabbed him in the chest and was arrested on the spot. (Reports failed to mention if the man was further incensed by Sakamoto’s cheesy photos!) Real name Itoh Fumio, Sakamoto’s brief claim to fame was in the early 1990s when he debuted with the stage name Shin Kase Taishu. The name was a sarcastic move by the Interface Project management agency after they lost a court case to use the name Kase Taishu when that popular talento quit the agency. His showbiz career never really took off and in 1997 he quit only to try out a s pro wrestler in 1999. After that bid failed, he worked as a used car salesman, long-distance truck driver and restaurant manager. He is currently trying his luck again as a talento, but also working a couple of nights a week at a host club in Tokyo’s seedy Kabukicho district.
• TV Asahi announced at its regular press conference yesterday how it will handle coverage of the Diet elections if Japan’s soccer team reaches the final of the Asia Cup. With both events scheduled for July 29, the soccer would be broadcast live and the election results shown in one segment of the screen. The network also announced that oral proceedings in the court case initiated by “TeleAsa” and managing director Hayakawa Hiroshi against publisher Kodansha and others will begin on September 3. The plaintiffs are seeking ¥200 million in compensation and a published apology for an article claiming financial irregularities at the network that appeared in the “Shuukan Gendai” magazine last month.
Popular rock band Road of Major are to break up. The quartet announced the decision yesterday, saying they don’t plan to hold a farewell concert. The upcoming DVD “Golden Road Films” (on sale July 18) will be their final release. Made up of leader/bassist Matsumoto Kenichi (27), vocalist Kitagawa Kenichi (26), guitarist Kondo Nobumasa (24), and (23) on drums, the band was formed as a project on the TV Tokyo audition show “Hamaraja” in 2002. They played 50 shows in 100 days with the aim of building a big enough fan base that their debut single would make the Top 50 of the Oricon chart. If they succeeded, they’d sign with a major label; if they failed, they’d break up. Things went well, and “Taisetsuna Mono” entered at No.16, finally reaching No.2 and selling over a million copies. They were the first ever independent band to enter the Oricon chart at No.1 with their 2003 eponymous debut album. Although a major label deal followed in 2004, they never managed to reach the same heights again. The artificial nature of the band meant that the members often had different musical ideas and they finally decided to go their own ways.
Actress Okina Megumi (27) is giving the IT business one more try. She has been romantically linked with Kasahara Kenji (31), CEO of Mixi, Japan’s hugely successful social networking service. A graduate of Tokyo University, the entrepreneur is said to be worth in the region of ¥90 billion. Okina married Fujita Susumu, president of IT company Cyber Agent, in 2004 year but they were divorced by the summer of 2005. That romance was part of a boom in eligible showbusiness women going for high-profile and wealthy IT types. After the split, Okina was linked with a variety of guys, including a stage actor, a surfer from Hawaii, the actor son of a former prime minister, even a handsome Buddhist priest. But it looks like she has returned to the money. Though Kasahara is something of a protege of Fujita, his personal wealth is considerably bigger. So Okina can be said to be moving up the ladder of fortune.
Talento Haga Kenji (45) was arrested on Saturday, along with a senior member of the yakuza, a former world boxing champion and one other. Osaka prefectural police arrested Haga, former WBA and WBC super flyweight champion Watanabe Jiro (52), Kawakita Toshikazu (69), a gang leader affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate, and Hatsushika Yuji (57), described only as unemployed. Police say that in 2001, the debt-ridden playboy Haga sold shares in an unlisted Tokyo-based medical consulting company at triple their actual price to an acquaintance, a real estate company president in Osaka. The man was reluctant to pay ¥370 million for the shares but Haga called him hundreds of times with guarantees that the investment would pay out five-fold. In the end, only ¥120 million was used to buy shares in the man’s name, the rest of the money being used to buy shares in the name of Haga’s company and to repay his debts. The consulting company almost immediately declared bankruptcy and the man started looking for his money back. In June last year the accused, excluding Haga, presented him with a document saying Haga would return only the handling fee of ¥10 million, forcing him to sign under threat of violence or worse. And of that money, Kawakita and Hatsushika are said to have taken more than ¥6 million. Haga claims that the matter is settled as he returned the money as described in the document. Only Hatsushika has owned up to the allegations. Until this incident came to light, Haga had managed to convince the showbiz world that he had repaid his debts through his hard work running a successful jewelry business. He got married in Hawaii in October of last year.