..a very interesting thread.
Posted on 08/21/2009 12:56:22 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo
Japanese Pop Idol Recast as Junkie
Earthquakes, tsunami tidal waves, typhoons, floods and landslides kept Japanese news gatherers busy over the Obon week when Japanese traditionally return home to pay respects to departed relatives who return briefly from the spirit world. It wasn't, however, any act of God that shocked the nation but alleged drug use by singer Noriko Sakai.
Manufactured pop idols cranked out by Japan's powerful production companies have dominated Japan's music charts for decades. Sakai, who debuted at 15 in 1987 with squeaky voice, clean-cut image and cute nickname, Nori-P, was one of the most successful winning a big following at home and as well as in Taiwan and Hong Kong. At 38, acting rather than singing was sustaining her celebrity, but her whiter than white reputation that corporations including Toyota Motor tapped to sell their products remained unsullied. Sponsors are now queuing up to dump her.
Sakai's fall began when police stopped her husband Yuchi Takaso in Tokyo on Aug. 3. Found with an illegal stimulant hidden in his underpants the ex-surfer phoned his wife and asked her to come down. The officers rummaging through his clothes weren't wooed by her celebrity status and instead asked her for a urine sample too.
Promising to visit the local police station, Sakai however went on the run for a week with her 10-year old son. Police in the meantime searched her Tokyo apartment where they found less than one thousandth of a gram of "white powder" in her bedroom. Though tiny it was enough for an arrest warrant and plenty to give Japan its juiciest celebrity scandal this year.
Camera crews jostled outside police cells and TV shows trotted out commentators and drug experts who quickly demonized the Japanese idol. A recent tattoo on her ankle was, they insisted, a sign of her drug addiction. Among young Japanese body art is common, but to older Japanese tattooing is still strongly associated with Yakuza criminal gangs. Some even suggested changes in hairstyle were a result of her dabbling in drugs, a bright red streak in her fringe being the most diabolical of her recent hair salon choices.
For Japan's police it was a gift. Criticized as bunglers in recent years Sakai's high profile arrest allowed Japan&'s men in blue to look tough on drug crime. The girl next door lured into the evils of drug use was perhaps too good to miss. Yet the image of a demon junky is probably no closer to the real Sakai than was the idol. After two decades of airtight marketing its impossible to tell because little is known beyond her constructed persona.
With no apparent evidence that Sakai snorted amphetamines or any other drug and with such a miniscule amount of white powder found in her bedroom prosecutors in the end may just let her go and let the media finish her off. Yet in choosing to demonize her Japan is missing the chance to take a deeper and more honest look at drug use.
Though discussed little in public, estimates put Japan's regular drug users in the millions. Amphetamine crystals, known locally as shabu shabu is common, but cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana and other narcotics are readily available despite stiff penalties. Japan doesn't differentiate between soft and hard drugs.
Official statistics also ignore people who imbibe an array of hallucinogens and other concoctions sold legally online and in the streets as new chemical formulas outpace laws meant to control drug use. Information about drug use is almost none existent and ignorance as a result is rife.
Sakai is unlikely to educate her fellow Japanese. The singer, whose most famous song is "Blue Bunny"; reportedly told police she got her drugs from a foreigner. True or not, blaming it on a faceless 'gaijin' is one way to keep the scandal from spreading to friends and associates. Unfortunately it reinforces a delusion that drug abuse is a foreign scourge and not something homegrown.
“Give me the feeling of wondering if I will be shot down in the middle of the night at a 7-Eleven in a bad part of town just trying to get emergency baby formula ANYDAY.”
I’ll take that given I can avail myself of an “equalizer”. Unlike in Japan, where if you are accosted you’d better be trained in martial arts, young and fit.
At any rate, the “bad part of town” is easily avoided. ;-)
Now, I visit whenever powerlifting affairs bring me there - I manage a women's lifting team here and my girls are often on Team USA at the World championships.
I would live there in a heartbeat if they would let me.
I'm actually planning for my minor children to be able move there. Or somewhere in Asia.
Teaching them Japanese, not Spanish. LOL!
I wonder if that minor cosmetic surgery for the eyes is still popular there.
Opens up the eyes to look more Western.
Ah well, here is the 48 kilo girl I am targeting to beat at the next IPF World chanpionships, Yukako Fukushima.
I had to laugh at my girls’ expressions when I told them that this "girl" is 37 years old.
My 48k lifter has beaten Shoko Tanaka’s total with ease, and Shoko is on this 7 minute video, as well.
Yukako squats 386 pounds at a bodyweight of 105lbs, at the 6 minute mark of the video
Round 3, IPF WC 2008 Women -48kg, Squat.
World Powerlifting Championships 2008 in St. John´s NL/ Canada
SORRY AIT
Since I got DTV Convertion box I been watching Spanish speaking soap opera called Mun Palbo Diablo it very good
I could get English subtiles
oh suuuure...! Allll the gaijin’s fault..! Unpredictable gaijin, donchya know..!
Oldest one in the book...
日本＊ピング＊ (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)
She should have talked to Macca about the perils of having drugs in Japan.
MAJIDE!
Ooooh...
Is there a website of ‘Old photos from Japan’?
I suppose I could just Google ‘Old photos from Japan’...
But this is easier.
The safety factor is what’s really ‘weird’ about Japan. Can’t think of another non-communist country where you can safely walk in almost any part of its major city.
Not Noriko-chan!
For those of you who have no idea who Sakai Noriko is, let's just say she is/was arguably the biggest pop star of the Bubble era. Imagine if Sally Field had been busted for meth during the Gidget years and you'll get a small sample of how shocking this affair is.
Ah, Nori-P, how I loved thee... in Arcadia, in the days of my youth...
(TT____TT) I can’t believe it! A meth bust! Remember what they did to Ai Kago (the cutest member of MiniMoni) just for smoking a cigarette? What’s next, Yaguchi Mari revealed as a crackhead?
I’m crying inside...
I hate to make it worse and really rub it in, but it seems that what with her (probably) over-4 year-old meth addiction, it seems (ahem!), a lot of people also “loved her”, but in some different, unprintable ways. She appears to have been pretty desperate just to get a “fix.” Sad. So much for the pure, white image.
Thanks :-\
My wife has been following this.
My wife just reminded me that many years ago, before we were married, she gave me a Nori-P photo book. Now I may have to dig it out of whatever box it’s buried in.
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