Johnny's Boycott Threat Escalates as STARTO Blocks Kohaku Entries

The Boycott That Changes Everything

Three years after the sexual abuse scandal that toppled the Johnny’s empire, the thaw between NHK and its successor company STARTO Entertainment has frozen over completely. The latest evidence: STARTO has formally instructed its affiliated record labels not to submit any artists for this year’s NHK Kohaku Uta Gassen, according to NHK insiders cited by Shukan Bunshun.

As of now, zero STARTO-affiliated acts are scheduled to appear on Japan’s most-watched annual music television event. NHK is reportedly still negotiating directly with King & Prince and Aぇ!group to bypass the agency’s blockade — a rare attempt to reach artists around their management’s head. Sources within NHK’s programming division tell Shukan Bunshun that senior producers have made multiple discreet contact attempts with the groups’ management teams, exploring whether individual contracts or label affiliations might allow NHK to secure appearances without formally violating STARTO’s directive.

This is not a dispute over artistic differences. It is a structural rupture with no precedent in Kohaku’s sixty-plus-year history. No major talent agency has ever been entirely excluded from the program, and industry veterans say the logistics of such a complete blackout are so unusual that emergency planning sessions have reportedly been held at NHK’s Roppongi headquarters in recent weeks.

The Trigger Was a Live Broadcast

The deterioration dates to June, when NHK produced and aired a live broadcast of the MUSIC AWARDS JAPAN 2026 ceremony. Multiple sources told Shukan Bunshun that STARTO interpreted the network’s involvement as a breach of trust — either that NHK was exploiting the agency’s artistic output for its own programming without adequate regard for the agency’s position, or that the broadcast amplified coverage in ways STARTO found uncomfortable.

The exact grievance remains murky, but insiders on both sides characterize it as a clash over creative control and branding. NHK had promoted the awards ceremony as a flagship event in its entertainment lineup, running features on STARTO-affiliated artists in the weeks leading up to the broadcast. STARTO executives, according to people familiar with the internal discussion, viewed this as NHK using the company’s rebuilt public image — carefully cultivated since Fujishima’s resignation — as a promotional vehicle without compensating the agency or consulting on editorial framing.

What is clear is that the relationship, which had been cautiously rebuilding since former president Fujishima Julie Keiko resigned from day-to-day operations and publicly committed to focusing on victim compensation, collapsed almost overnight. The pacing of the fallout — from what sources describe as fragile cooperation to outright hostility in a matter of weeks — suggests that underlying tensions existed long before the MUSIC AWARDS incident and were merely waiting for a catalyst.

Julie Fujishima’s Shadow

Perhaps the most revealing detail in the Shukan Bunshun report is not the boycott itself but what surrounds it. Fujishima — the woman who stepped down as STARTO’s president amid the scandal — is reportedly still pulling strings from behind the scenes.

The publication obtained an attendee list from a sixtieth-birthday celebration for Fujishima held at a high-end restaurant in Roppongi, an event that drew idols currently signed to STARTO-affiliated labels. Photographs from the evening, circulated among industry insiders, show performers who are actively promoting new releases and upcoming tours alongside Fujishima at what one attendee described as “a family gathering disguised as a birthday party.” This visual of Fujishima’s continued dominance inside the company contradicts her public posture of withdrawal and reconciliation-focused retreat.

If the boycott is, in part, Fujishima’s doing rather than a collective agency decision, it reframes the entire narrative. This is not a company that has accepted accountability. It is a company whose founder, forced into nominal retirement, is still steering from the margins — and deciding that NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, is not a partner but an adversary. The power dynamic at play here echoes the historical relationship between Johnny & Associates and Japanese media, where Fujishima’s late father Johnny Kitagawa exercised extraordinary control over which outlets received access to his talent and which did not.

What This Means for Kohaku

Kohaku has historically drawn 30 to 40 million viewers annually, making it the single most consequential television appearance in a Japanese artist’s calendar. Johnny’s acts — Snow Man, SixTONES, King & Prince, and others — have been anchors of the program for decades. Their absence in 2026 would be the first complete exclusion of the franchise in Kohaku’s history.

The practical impact on the show is immediate and visible. STARTO artists filled multiple spots across both the red and white teams in recent years. In 2024 alone, roughly a dozen STARTO-affiliated acts appeared across both halves of the broadcast. Filling those slots will require last-minute replacements, likely drawn from artists without Johnny’s ties — a noticeable shift in the program’s cultural texture. Producers are understood to be reaching out to Victor Entertainment, Sony Music Japan, and Avex-affiliated acts as potential stand-ins, though some of those companies have reportedly expressed reluctance to be drawn into what they view as an internal STARTO-NHK dispute.

There is also a symbolic dimension. Kohaku is not merely a concert special; it is a mirror of Japan’s entertainment hierarchy. Removing Johnny’s from that mirror does not erase the company’s commercial power — Snow Man and King & Prince remain among Japan’s highest-grossing touring acts — but it does signal that the company’s cultural authority has been significantly diminished. For decades, appearance on Kohaku was treated as a rite of passage and a marker of mainstream legitimacy. Its denial carries weight far beyond ratings.

Second-Order Effects

The ripple effects of this boycott are already extending beyond the television screen. Record stores that previously stocked Johnny’s merchandise in prominent positions are reassessing shelf allocations, with some managers reporting that promotional materials from STARTO-affiliated labels have stopped arriving. Radio networks that depend on Johnny’s talent for special programming are evaluating whether to continue airing content tied to the agency, weighing audience demand against the risk of being perceived as taking sides in the NHK dispute.

Perhaps more significantly, the boycott is accelerating a quiet restructuring of Japan’s entertainment industry. For years, the Johnny’s system operated as a closed ecosystem — training, production, promotion, and distribution all flowed through a single pipeline. The STARTO-NHK rift is forcing artists, labels, and broadcasters to consider alternatives to that model. Several mid-tier talents who were previously locked into STARTO-dominated pipelines are reportedly exploring opportunities with independent labels and production companies that have been edged out of the Johnny’s orbit for decades. Industry analysts note that this could accelerate a decentralization trend that the scandal initially suggested but never fully realized.

For NHK, the stakes are equally high. The broadcaster has invested significant institutional capital in rebuilding its relationship with Johnny’s talent, viewing that partnership as essential to maintaining relevance with younger viewers. Accepting a complete blackout without challenge would signal to other talent agencies that NHK can be pressured into concessions — a precedent with implications far beyond the music programming division. Internal debates at NHK are said to be sharp, with some executives arguing that the network should absorb the embarrassment rather than risk a public confrontation that could damage relationships across the broader entertainment sector.

The Bigger Picture

The STARTO-NHK rift is significant because it extends beyond a single television program. It represents the acceleration of a reckoning that began with the abuse scandals and is now moving into structural territory — who controls narratives, who controls broadcast access, and whether a company founded on a cult of personality can survive the moment its founder is exposed as an abuser.

STARTO’s denial to Shukan Bunshun that any rift exists with NHK is predictable. The company has every incentive to manage its public image while quietly enforcing a boycott that serves internal power dynamics better than it serves the artists themselves. The contradiction between the denial and the observed behavior — zero entries, active outreach from NHK, reports of internal planning sessions — underscores how thoroughly the agency has normalized a posture of plausible deniability.

What happens next hinges on whether NHK succeeds in its outreach to individual artists like King & Prince and Aぇ!group. If NHK can secure appearances despite STARTO’s objections, it would establish a new precedent: that the broadcaster can negotiate directly with talent regardless of agency hostility. If NHK backs down and accepts zero Johnny’s acts, it concedes to a private company’s veto over a public institution’s programming — a dangerous compromise that could embolden other agencies to exercise similar leverage in future disputes.

Either way, Kohaku in December 2026 will look fundamentally different from any version Japanese audiences have seen before. The absence of Johnny’s is not simply a missing act or two — it is the absence of an entire cultural institution from the country’s most-watched music event. How NHK fills that void, and whether STARTO ultimately relents, will define not only a television broadcast but the direction of Japan’s entertainment industry for years to come.