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A Japanese pop starlet has sparked an outcry after she shaved her head and issued a tearful YouTube apology for spending the night with her boyfriend.

Minami Minegishi, member of popular girl band AKB48, begged for forgiveness in the unnerving video clip after breaking her band’s strict ‘no dating’ rule.

The 20-year-old issued the apology yesterday after a magazine published snaps of her leaving popstar boyfriend’s home after spending the night.

A sobbing Minegishi told fans she had shaved her head as an act of penance and said the tryst had been “thoughtless and immature”.

In the four-minute clip, she says: “If it is possible, I wish from the bottom of my heart to stay in the band," she said. "Everything I did is entirely my fault. I am so sorry.

“I don't believe just doing this means I can be forgiven for what I did, but the first thing I thought was that I don't want to quit AKB48.”

She ends the mea culpa, which has been watched almost five million times, by saying: “As a senior member of the group, it is my responsibility to be a role model for younger members.”

The starlet was snapped wearing a surgical mask and with a baseball cap covering her long hair as she left the home of Alan Shirahama, a dancer in the popular boyband Exile.

The story was splashed across tabloid magazine Shukan Bunshun and Minegishi was reportedly pleading to be allowed to remain with AKB48 just hours later.

AKB48, a hugely popular band made up of 90 girls in their teens and early twenties, is believed to have demoted Minegishi to ‘trainee level’, according to its official blog.

But fans have leapt to the young star’s defence, branding the apology “disgusting” and took to Twitter to argue that there was nothing wrong with an adult woman leading a “normal life”.

Author and critic Hiroki Azuma said it was "disgusting" that Minegishi had been pressured to the extent where she had to resort to medieval means to make amends for a perfectly normal romance.

User @Shige_Onz tweeted: "What's the point of this public execution show? It's like something from the war or a totalitarian state."