#259: The “Godfather Of J-Pop” Assaulted Male Trainees In Exchange For Making Them Stars (Johnny Kitagawa)
Rotten Mango
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Johnny's Journey to a Better Life
Johnny and Associates, the biggest J-pop agency at the time, has a strange origin story. The story starts with a play called West Side Story. It's possible that African American music culture had this huge influence on Johnny considering he was super into jazz and dance. So which they never got credit for anyway,. But he takes four boys from the baseball team to see West Side Story, their lives changed forever. They were ballet meets jazz style, the next day it went very differently. After each game, the boys would follow Johnny back to his apartment because these are middle schoolers. He would have all of these imported snacks from the US that were very hard to get in other areas of
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