Weekly Bunshun has published an index to its recent entertainment scoops, and the framing is the point: its reporting on two women who say they reported the television personality Matt to police over non-consensual sex is one entry on a long list. The roundup, carried on the magazine's online edition on 29 October, runs through a boy band arrest and contract termination, a hit TBS drama and its director, a veteran presenter's admission, a Fuji Television producer's departure and the Nakai Masahiro affair — the kind of run that makes the weekly's revelations the story the rest of Japan's media spends the week catching up on.
Most of the items are summaries of articles already published, and several of the excerpts on the page stop mid-sentence. Where that is the case, this account says so.
Matt: two women, three complaints
The lead item concerns Matt (32), a television personality and model who is the son of the former Yomiuri Giants pitcher Kuwata Masumi and who appears alongside his father in SoftBank commercials. Two women told the magazine they had reported him to police over non-consensual sexual intercourse — the offence Japan created in 2023 when it rewrote its rape laws — and the magazine says three written complaints were submitted to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department between the year before last and this year.
“I was filmed during the act as well. It was truly humiliating.”one of the women who reported Matt to police, in an interview with Weekly Bunshun, alleged victim
The magazine also approached Kuwata. The excerpt on the roundup page opens with him saying, "At first, if only I could put up with it..." and ends there, so what he went on to say is not clear from this page.
timelesz: an arrest, a sacking and a seven-person apology
On 19 September, Inomata Shuto (25) of the boy band timelesz was arrested on suspicion of injuring a woman. The magazine's account describes a woman's shout of "I was hit by my boyfriend!" outside a convenience store at night, police arriving, and the arrest that followed. On 1 October his agency, STARTO ENTERTAINMENT — the company that manages the groups descended from the former Johnny & Associates — terminated his contract.
Earlier reporting went into what the magazine called a betrayal of his bandmate Kikuchi Fuma and published a letter of apology addressed to Inomata's mother. Witnesses described the scene, the agency was said to have been worried about his way with women, and his father and grandmother talked about the son and grandson they knew. A 15 October article went behind the apology press conference, at which seven people faced the cameras.
TBS and the VIVANT director
VIVANT, the TBS drama whose second season was running as one of the network's biggest hits, is directed by Fukuzawa Katsuo (62). In September the magazine reported that during filming an assistant director suffered a serious injury — a fracture that would take a month to heal — in what it described as power harassment by the director, and that TBS had classified the matter as confidential. Power harassment, the abuse of a superior's position, is something Japanese employers have been legally obliged to prevent since 2020.
Kokubun Taichi, a Fuji producer and JO1
- Kokubun Taichi (51): on 18 June, Nippon TV summoned the presenter for questioning by a compliance officer and a lawyer, and he admitted two obscene incidents, the magazine reported, beginning with an occasion when he drank alone with a female member of programme staff in a hotel room.
- A veteran Fuji Television producer: the chief director of the comedy show Chidori no Oni Renchan disappeared from recordings in December, and a network source told the magazine he had been removed over power harassment.
- JO1's Ohira Shosei (26): the magazine reported in April that he would leave the boy band at the end of May and quit his agency, LAPONE Entertainment, after a period of inactivity following reports that he had been two-timing a member of the girl group ME:I.
Nakai Masahiro and Fuji Television
The longest thread is the magazine's series on Nakai Masahiro, the former SMAP member, and Fuji Television, the network that built so much of its schedule around him. One instalment, from January 2025, placed Nakai at the drinking party in the "suite room of fear" at the centre of the separate story about the comedian Matsumoto Hitoshi; another carried a new accuser's claim that she too had been "offered up" by a Fuji Television programming executive.
"Nakai's home is easy for people to gather at," the executive, identified only as A, told the magazine in February 2025 when its reporters approached him. A third-party committee — the panel Japanese companies convene to investigate their own scandals — was at the time examining why Fuji Television had not reported the woman's complaints even to its compliance department, and had kept Nakai's programmes on air.
The most detailed piece, from August 2025, concerned a notice letter that the lawyer for the woman identified as X-ko sent to Nakai's side, which the magazine says carried the words "non-consensual sexual intercourse etc.". Nakai's side has said no sexual violence was confirmed; the magazine reported that defamation of X-ko accelerated after that rebuttal, and that on the night in question Nakai showed her SMAP concert footage before the passage, cut off on the roundup page, continues.
The page notes that all of the articles can be read in the magazine's electronic edition, and advertises a first month at 300 yen with a discount on annual plans. It also links to unrelated features and to advertising.