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Paper short abstract

This study examines the 2024 Fuji TV scandal—triggered by sexual assault allegations of a female announcer against top Japanese celebrity—as a pivotal case study in media governance, corporate ethics, and gender accountability in Japan. It analyzes the scandal as a media product and a social ritual.

Paper long abstract

This study examines the 2024 Fuji TV scandal—triggered by sexual assault allegations of a female TV announcer against top Japanese celebrity Nakai Masahiro—as a pivotal case study in media governance, corporate ethics, and gender accountability in Japan. The study reconstructs the "scandal flow," tracing the trajectory from initial tabloid leaks to a full-scale public scandal that resulted in the resignation of Fuji TV’s top leadership. It utilizes a triangulated corpus of media coverage, press conferences, and third-party reports to analyze the scandal through two primary theoretical lenses: The first lens, “Scandal-as-Product,” investigates the structural divide between the mainstream media (dailies, TV stations, wire agencies) that tend to ignore or censor scandals, and the non-mainstream media (weeklies, social media, foreign media) that usually trigger and amplify scandals in Japan. This lens demonstrates how the non-mainstream outlets overrode the self-censorship of the mainstream outlets, effectively reframing the incident from a private trouble to a corporate disaster. The second lens, “Scandal-as-Ritual,” evaluates the effectiveness of apologetic press conferences during the scandal. It shows how Fuji TV’s failure to conduct a proper apologetic ritual has backfired, leading to a massive scandal that alienated investors, employees, and viewers. Besides, the Fuji TV scandal activated a sustained #MeToo mobilization, as women leveraged an online hashtag testimony of workplace sexual coercion. Thus, it also offers a critical insight into the impact of gender accountability on Japanese media outlets during sex-related scandals.