Japan's Most Cancerous Paparazzi

Added: 2026-04-30

[00:00:02]There are treatments that can suppress a cancer,  but it won’t go away completely unless you cut it out. Bunshun is cancer. Bunshun is tabloid  magazine that ‘exposes’ celebrity and political scandals, to ‘reveal the truth’, yes including the  seiyuu we love so much. Think of them as the most cancerous combination of keemstar and a paparazzi  squad that stalks people with little legal consequences. But why are they so controversial,  and how are literal stalkers protected by the law?

[00:00:31]Well first what do they do? Bunshun’s  tactics are simple but honestly scummy: They essentially choose targets, often working  in teams, and stalk celebrities, even having cases where they rent neighboring apartments  just to properly stalk their lives, know their target’s life patterns. Once the magazine has  gathered enough evidence through surveillance, and are sure they have good juice, a reporter will  suddenly approach the target in a public space, and confront them with the evidence of their  scandal while a photographer captures their panicked reaction. This is literally their tactic:  To catch the target off guard and prevent them from preparing any response with their management  or lawyers. Plus, normally when dealing with such a situation, the celebrity panics, they might even  slip and say something they shouldn't, but either way, they have material so with their findings  and this ‘surprise interview’ they publish the piece for the world to see. If you’ve seen Oshi  no Ko S3, it’s actually very, very similar to what Kana went through. They justify these acts  by saying they’re ‘pursuing the truth’, but there have been some very, very controversial cases.  Let’s go over some of them from lightest to worst.

[00:01:38]Many are the stupid ones: revealing that  this seiyuu has a boyfriend/girlfriend to get attention. The parasocial fans then go  crazy. The seiyuu then chooses to admit it and apologize for some reason, or deny it  and explain. Take Kito Akari for example, a 26 year old who was found hanging out in the  street with another fellow male voice actor Hozomi Yuya,and somehow Bunshun saw him come out of her  apartment at night, then ambushed them to ask them on the street. Just for hanging out. Both  Akarin and Yuya chose to deny the accusations, saying they were just close friends, and  thankfully their careers are fine. They are far from the only pair. Several relationships,  even marriages have been exposed through Bunshun, like hanakana and ono kensho’s relationship,  and the fact that Hiroshi Kamiya was even ever married. I think it’s a disgusting invasion  of privacy, like them dating has nothing to do with their voice acting job, and many people  agree its disgusting behaviour, but you know it gets the clicks, people care about celebrity  gossip, so they get revenue to keep doing it.

[00:02:47]And then you have the next level of scandal,  where they reveal cheating or affairs. There are several infamous cases like Takahiro  Sakurai, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Tatsuhisa Suzuki, who had an affair outside their marriage and got  caught by bunshun. Some stayed fine, some careers were ruined, with even a suicide attempt.  I’m not denying that the actions are sh*tty, and some people would think it’s justice to bring  these things to light, but I’m still not sure. But then there also times where they try and over  exaggerate sh*t and it super backfires on them.

[00:03:18]There was a time when Bunshun tried to cancel  Yuichi Nakamura, for guess making lewd jokes when playing with another female streamer.  That’s it, that’s all they tried cancel him for. Obviously,most fans pushed back, saying  Bunshun was making a huge deal out of nothing, but you can really see how desperate they are  to get a scoop out of popular celebrities.

[00:03:39]And while all these seiyuu “ambushes” are  already disgusting behaviour on its own, they are nothing compared to the lives they  have ruined with sheer misinformation in other cases on a much larger scale. And they  really do stop at nothing to stalk people.

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[00:05:04]First we have the case of Nakai and Fuji TV. In  2023, there was a case where Masahiro Nakai, a tv host s*xual assaulted a woman who was an announcer  at Fuji TV, at a dinner. Nakai got into hot water and had to pay a huge settlement fee. However, a  year later, Bunshun made a damaging claim: that an executive of Fuji TV had actually personally  invited the woman to this dinner. So the claim was that this entire thing was coordinated, and Fuji  TV had a company culture of exploiting its female employees to keep their talent happy. This caused  extreme damage to Fuij TV’s reputation with over 75 major companies, including Toyota, Meiji Yasuda  Life, and Nippon Life, suspended their commercials on Fuji TV, causing their advertising revenue to  drop, facing a loss of approximately 90 billion yen. A lot stuff happened and Fuji TV even had to  address this in a huge press conference. And then, only right before the press conference, they  suddenly posted a second article claiming that oh, nah this woman was actually only personally  invited by Nakai. And they even tried to keep this mistake low, but only putting it in  the paid section at first. So essentially, they tried to silently change crucial details of  a case that they had fu*ked up last second before a press conference, so that media outlets would  ask about these new details at the conference, executives would have no time to prepare, and  they could feed off the panic of the executives again and maybe get a new scoop. What the fu*k  scummy practice is this?? In the end Fuji TV is now suing its own executives for failing to  respond properly, seeking 5 billion in damages, showing the power and influence of Bunshun,  but the case of AKB48 is no better.

[00:06:53]In the 2010s, with the huge rise of AKB48, they  became a prime target for gossip magazines. In 2010, Bunshun released an article claiming AKB48  are the president’s ‘harem’, pleasure squad, citing inappropriate relationships with members.  The management company AKS and its president immediately sued Bunshun for defamation, demanding  150 million yen in damages. In they won the case because the court claimed that the the article  was “completely groundless” with no sufficient reason to believe they were true and caused  serious harm.The amount they got paid? 1.65 million yen. Bunshun made up all that bullsh*t,  to get sued only to pay like 10k USD. I guarantee they made way more than that off the scoop.  But despite some backlash, at least this had an ok ending for the girls and the group. The  same could not be said about Mitsuo Kagawa.

[00:07:50]You see back before Bunshun decided that  celebrity scoops were the most profitable, they focused on more societal scandals. Mitsuo  Kagawa was a professor at Beppu University in archeology. Decades ago, he led an excavation  back and reported finding stone tools and human remains that they believed to be from the Stone  Age. Because of a previous scandal in archeology where an archeologist faked finding artifacts  however, Bunshun accused Kagawa of again faking the evidence, framing him in the same light as the  man in the first scandal. But all their report had was criticism from some other researchers, there  was nothing even close to evidence that Kagawa had faked any of the artifacts. After the articles  came out, Kagawa’s reputation collapsed very quickly, essentially, accused of academic  dishonesty in front of the entire country and destroying his social standing. In the end,  Kagawa unfortunately committed suicide and left a note insisting on his innocence. After that,  a committee from the Japanese Archaeological Association reviewed the evidence and found it  unlikely that Kagawa had fabricated anything.

[00:08:51]Kagawa’s family then sued Bunshun for defamation,  claiming false accusations that damaged his reputation and contributed to his suicide. In the  end? Bunshun was ordered to pay 9.2 million yen, for all of that. This is not even the only case  where Bunshun ruined a person’s life over false accusations either. There are plenty more, and  they’ve been sued more days than I’ve been to school but that brings up a question: how are  they even able to do this sh*t? Why is this legal?

[00:09:20]Well you see, in Japan, stalking is only  illegal if it is for personal motives like grudges or feelings of affection. Typically, a  journalist’s motive is officially "news-gathering" or "professional investigation", it falls outside  the scope, which I think is absolutely fu*ked up but you know. Moreover, in Japanese law, even if  an act (like invasion of privacy) is committed, if it is deemed to be in public interest, it  may not be deemed illegal. The only requirements are for the purpose to be solely for the public  benefit and the contents being true, or there was at least a "reasonable ground" to believe they  were true based on thorough research. Because celebrities and voice actors are considered public  figures, paparazzi like Bushun get way more leeway through these rules. While difficult to charge  criminally, they have been sued civilly a billion times by now, particularly for defamation,  and they have lost many cases by now, but the penalty as you’ve probably seen only ever  ranges to be in a few million yen, while a big scoop can make them hundreds of millions. So they  have no reason to stop, even if they get sued, they still have a financial incentive to  keep going because the penalties are so low.

[00:10:31]What I think is fu*ked up about this is  how it psychologically affects celebrities, the seiyuu we love so much. Imagine just say,  wanting to date like a normal person, and having to constantly be alert of stalkers, wear masks  to hide identity, and be ready at any given time for a random fu*king reporter to surprise attack  you with questions exposing your personal life.

[00:10:53]It’s not only such a huge invasion of privacy, but  there is so much unnecessary psychological stress added to their lives. This is not even to mention  the collateral damage when they try and reach out to their targets’ family, friends, colleagues  and stuff, ruining relationships. I feel like their ambush tactic alone should constitute  as harassment. The fact that they will stop at absolutely nothing for a scoop is scummy as fu*k,  and they literally pride themselves off having no bottom line not to cross to get a story. I won’t  deny that they have exposed some heinous sh*t in the industry, but is this really the right way?  They have massively fu*ked up facts and ruined lives with a single publication, and tried to  cover it up. It’s very very clear that money is their main motive, and unfortunately it works,  because people are just curious about celebrities and they have the best clickbait titles in the  world. I honestly think it’s even more fu*ked up that the legal system allows this in the  first place, I mean they have been charged in the past even criminally, but again, the fines  are always just petty money to them. There’s a lack of accountability, even when they misreport  sh*t, there’s barely any consequences to them while the victims end up with a ruined career or  life. They have ruined so many lives and careers, the few I covered today are only a tiny, tiny  insignificant percentage of that. They literally make money through ruining people’s lives, and  I don’t know I just think it’s so fu*ked up, especially for the innocents. It makes me so mad  when I think about what my favourite seiyuu have to go through because of them, and I think much  of the internet agrees with this take. But what do you think? I really want to know your opinions so  do tell me in the comments. Thanks for watching!