Higashiyama's Exit Is Just the First Domino for Johnny's Scandal

The Leader Who Was Never Meant to Stay

Noriyuki Higashiyama bowed his head on September 28, 2026, and announced he was stepping down as president of SMILE-UP, the organization that absorbed Johnny & Associates after its rebranding. He joined the agency in 1979 and rose to fame as a member of Shonen TAI, one of the most iconic idol groups in Japanese pop history. By 2023, when the full scope of founder Johnny Kitagawa’s decades of sexual abuse erupted into public view, Higashiyama had already survived three decades in an industry built on silence.

His departure is not a dramatic fall. It is a planned exit on “term expiration” grounds — the kind of phrase that means no boardroom coup occurred, no scandal directly implicated him, and no one lost sleep.

That is exactly the problem.

Who Higashiyama Was Always Meant to Be

When Fujishima Julie Keiko resigned as president in June 2023, SMILE-UP needed someone who could handle the compensation process without bringing fresh attention. Higashiyama fit that description precisely: a veteran insider with enough distance from the top of the power structure to be palatable, enough status to command respect from the remaining artists, and enough ambiguity to avoid being a lightning rod.

He was never meant to solve the scandal. He was meant to manage it — and then step aside when the administrative work around victim compensation was complete enough to survive scrutiny.

Three years later, the clock has run out.

What His Resignation Actually Signals

Higashiyama himself stated during the September press conference that the leadership change “does not mean the response to the sexual abuse issue is over.” That line, delivered with practiced sincerity, carried two messages: the organization is not abandoning its duty, and no one is accepting personal responsibility for failures.

The implication is structural. Japan’s entertainment industry has always treated abuse scandals as personnel problems to be shuffled, never as institutional failures to be dismantled. SMILE-UP has followed the same script — replace a name at the top, announce a new leadership team, let the press cycle move on.

But the mechanics of compensation are far from finished. As of late 2026, legal proceedings involving former Johnny’s Jr. members continue, including lawsuits from victims who were denied compensation because their cases fell outside the narrow eligibility criteria set by the organization. A former member named Koichi Nagato, who publicly discussed his fear of confronting his trauma, remains one of the most visible figures representing those excluded from the current settlement framework.

The Winners and the Losers

Who wins from Higashiyama’s departure? The answer depends on which side of the scandal you stand.

For SMILE-UP’s existing board and the investors backing it — notably Yoshimoto Kogyo, which holds a significant stake — the change removes a figure whose presence, however quiet, kept the organization associated with the Kitagawa era. A new president can signal a cleaner break. Yoshimoto has positioned itself as a reform-oriented partner, and this reshuffle gives them another opportunity to project that image to investors and international observers who have watched the Johnny’s scandal with growing unease.

For the victims, the effect is negligible. The compensation structure remains unchanged. The legal framework still requires survivors to meet strict eligibility thresholds. The statute of limitations debate — now championed by former members through a formal petition submitted to authorities — has gone nowhere in the Diet.

For Japanese media, it is more of the same: a photo op of a bowing executive, a brief news cycle, then a return to regular programming. One op-ed in the Mainichi catalogued alongside this story warned about a media that had “forgotten how to sing” — a reference to the industry’s long silence during the years when abuse allegations first surfaced.

What Happens Next

The immediate aftermath will involve the selection of a new president. SMILE-UP has not yet announced a timeline or candidate. Given the organization’s structure, the most likely scenario is an internal appointment approved by the board and Yoshimoto — someone acceptable to all parties, which in practice means someone who will not rock the boat.

The deeper question is whether Higashiyama’s exit will trigger any real operational change at SMILE-UP. The answer, based on three years of precedent, is almost certainly no. The compensation office will continue processing claims under the same criteria. The legal team will continue defending the organization in ongoing cases. The public-facing strategy will remain calibrated to minimize damage without admitting systemic fault.

What could shift is the external pressure. With the leadership transition now underway, advocates for victims may redirect their efforts toward demanding transparency about the compensation distribution — who received what, on what basis, and how decisions were made. They may also push harder for legislative action on the statute of limitations, which remains a significant barrier for survivors who came forward late.

The Bigger Picture

Higashiyama’s resignation is a reminder that Japan’s #MeToo reckoning in entertainment is not a single event but an ongoing process — and that process moves slowly, incrementally, and mostly within the confines of the institutions that created the problem in the first place.

SMILE-UP was never designed to be a reckoning. It was designed to be a transition — a way to keep the business running while the legal and financial fallout played out behind closed doors. Higashiyama was the face of that transition. His departure is not the end of it.

It is the next chapter.

For the victims, that chapter may bring little relief. For the industry, it brings the illusion of change. And for anyone watching from outside Japan, it is a case study in how a powerful institution absorbs a scandal without fundamentally changing — a pattern familiar in every entertainment market that has faced its own version of the Johnny’s reckoning.

The question now is not who takes Higashiyama’s seat. It is whether the person who follows him will be expected to do anything different from the person he replaces.