[This is an article I’ve translated to practice my Japanese and translation skills. I have no affiliation with the article source or any parties mentioned and the views expressed are not necessarily my own. I’ve done my best to translate accurately, but as it is practice there may be errors in the translated version. Feel free to point them out.

The original (Japanese) article may be found here.

I chose this article because I used to enjoy watching Thane Camus, an a) American fluent in Japanese, b) graduate of an international school just down the road from one of mine, albeit long before my time, and c) grandson – we think – of writer Albert Camus. However, he seemed to disappear rather abruptly from Japanese tv, so the other day I decided to do some Googling. This is what I came up with.

I talk about the translation a bit at the end; basically I’m not too happy with this one but it taught me a lot.]

An article published on this site [Business Journal] on May 25th entitled ‘Ami Suzuki, Makoto Kitano…why are celebrities suddenly “fired”? The politics that control the celebrity world’ attracted a great deal of attention.

In the article, Yohei Hoshino, author of ‘Why are celebrities suddenly fired? Infractions of entertainment industry anti-monopoly laws’ (published May 2014 by Rokusai), explained the political dynamics of the tv celebrity world. The fact that the article remained the most-read entertainment article on numerous mainstream news portal sites for two days in a row indicates that it connects with some of the questions most viewers have, and that there is a high level of interest in the topic among internet users.

Therefore, in this article, we asked Hoshino to comment more specifically on the circumstances surrounding the dismissals of individual celebrities.

To start with, please tell us about Ami Suzuki’s case.

Yohei Hoshino (hereafter, Hoshino): It’s unfortunate when you consider that, if not for her failure as an independent artist, she probably would have maintained her position at the top with the likes of Ayumi Hamasaki. In her case, she made a move to go independent when the president of her agency at the time was arrested on suspicion of tax evasion, but this move became problematic.

It’s natural for the employees of a company to want to quit if the president is arrested. Accordingly, at the end of 2000, Ms Suzuki filed a lawsuit to to terminate her contract with the agency, but this was held against her by much of the industry – industry meaning, in this case, the system surrounding the the Japan Association of Music Enterprises, or JAME, which doesn’t recognize moves by personalities to go independent or join another agency. As a result of this system, she was dropped from shows she was supposed to star in, and the mainstream media, which had thus far supported her, was quick to turn its back.

One point of contention within the lawsuit concerned her artist fees. Her father, who guided her independence move, said in the courtroom, “Ayumi Hamasaki made ¥660 million this year. It’s not right that Ami Suzuki should only make ¥37 million, almost twenty times less than that.” He demanded that the details of artist payment be made explicit.

Actually, as I explain in my book, in America, according to California state entertainment law, agencies must make their percentages clear to their artists and, when money comes in, must pay them within 30 days. It is unfortunate that Japanese artists are unable to know how much money they are making.

The court ruled that her contract should be terminated, but of course a court cannot ensure future jobs. There were fans who, not wanting to see her retire, rallied around her, but even this had its limits and the next 4 years were unremarkable. In 2005, she gave up on being an independent artist and signed with Avex, finally returning to the main stage as a musician.

How was she able to make such a comeback?

Hoshino: If you look into music publishing rights it becomes clear. Music publishing rights relate to the artist royalties and are explained on the JASRAC homepage. The rights to 42 out of the 43 tracks Ami Suzuki released before going independent, and 64 of her 94 tracks after returning, were held by Burning Publishers. Burning Publishers is a subsidiary of the influential production company Burning Productions.

In other words, in terms of the rights, she left Burning and she returned to Burning. In actuality, there are suspicions that during Ms Suzuki’s period of dismissal, Burning put pressure on television networks and instructed mass media to say she had retired.

Why Thane Camus disappeared

Behind the firing of artists, do you think there is sometimes a desire on the part of the agencies for them to return?

Hoshino: I definitely think so. After all, it’s really about money. This was confirmed in Thane Camus’s case as well.

Thane Camus used to be the face of foreign personalities on Japanese tv, but now we only see him in advertisements for English lessons.

Hoshino: Mr Camus had a dispute with his agency over not receiving royalties on his book and so switched agencies in 2005 and disappeared from television.

Concerning Mr Camus, his former agency said, “Originally, the expected revenue did not come in,” giving this as the reason for the lawsuit. However, the court record indicates that the agency sought a settlement and was even negotiating a transfer to another closely related agency behind the scenes.

On the other hand, the agency also warned networks that if they used Mr Camus, they would not be able to use Bobby Ologun (who belonged to the same agency). In this way they applied pressure on networks not to hire Thane Camus. There was even rumor of yakuza involvement.

Mr Camus, in return, sued for this obstruction of his career and in the end the claims of the agency were not recognized, Mr Camus’s claims were, and the agency was ordered to pay him ¥17.5 million.

However, Mr Camus’s image was further tarnished by allegations of past marijuana use, published in a weekly news magazine. Despite winning in court again when the agency appealed the first ruling, regaining his previous popularity proved difficult. Because the article making the drug allegations came out just before this appeal suit ruling, it is possible that it was done out of spite.

Though it may be unwise to force a connection, there is also the problem of production agencies knowing too much about celebrities’ personal lives. This leads to managers at times holding celebrities’ weaknesses over them as a form of blackmail.

The heavy personal involvement of Japanese talent agencies

Is this regulated in some way in the United States?

Hoshino: By American entertainment law, to keep the agent and management separate, the celebrity has a contract with the agency but hires a manager personally. In order to be hired, the manager, who interacts regularly with the celebrity and knows much about their personal life, must be a trustworthy person.

In Japan, the agent and management are the same entity, so the celebrity cannot escape the eyes of its agency.

Hoshino: That’s right. This isn’t in my book, but Yui Asaka’s was such a case – the agency was overly involved in her personal life and discord arose which ultimately led to her dismissal.

Yui Asaka played the lead role in the 1986 tv show ‘Sukeban Keiji 3 Shōjo Ninpōjō Denki’ [Bad Girl Detectives 3: Ninja Girls Romance] (Fuji TV) and at one time was the top idol in Japan, but in 1993 announced she was going on leave indefinitely, and now hasn’t been on tv for years.

Hoshino: Ms Asaka made her debut at the age of 15, and at age 19 fell in love with drummer Takahiro Nishikawa, who was 7 years her senior. The agency, alarmed upon hearing of this, forced them to separate and even gave Mr Nishikawa money to do so. This caused relations between Ms Asaka and her agency to sour, leading to work-related disputes. For example, the agency urged her to ‘cast a more sexy image as befit her age’ but she refused.

Amidst these bad relations Ms Asaka quit that agency and tried to release a photo album with photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, but the agency complained to JAME that she had promised not to doing any celebrity work for a year after leaving, and that she was profit from her previously established fame. JAME sought reconciliation by urging them to meet to discuss the issues and move forward.

Though JAME has no legal power, it has strong connections to the very core of the Japanese entertainment world and its views take almost absolute precedence.

In a later interview, Ms Asaka admitted she “didn’t understand the way the celebrity world was structured”. In 1997, four years after announcing she would be leaving indefinitely, she was able to restore relations with her agency and make a comeback.

Isn’t it true that if a celebrity doesn’t submit their agency they are labeled as “selfish”?

Hoshino: More than that, if the celebrity doesn’t do as he or she is told in both their work and personal lives, they cannot seriously pursue celebrity activities. As things currently stand, Japan will never produce a unique, highly individualistic artist such as Lady Gaga.

I would recommend my book to those who are interested in such questions about the Japanese entertainment industry.

Finally, please give us some insight into the real circumstances surrounding Makoto Kitano’s dismissal.

Hoshino: As is widely rumored, it is likely that Mr Kitano ‘trod on the tail of the tiger’ that is Burning Productions. The reason Burning Productions possesses such a fortress-like influence now is because they owned the rights to the music produced by Tetsuya Komuro from the mid-nineties to around 2000, which was highly popular. As to what happened before that, I cannot reveal that on the internet, I can only invite readers to consult my book.

[Well, that was a chore! Not so much because of the difficulty of the language or subject – I could understand most of it my first read-through in Japanese. No, the real struggle was twofold: switching around the sentence structure, and using natural English, which in many cases meant using completely different words to try to capture the same meaning. A literal translation might convey the meaning but it would be extremely difficult to read, and even more so to scan.

I’m not too happy with this one, but it was the first, and it was a learning experience. At the beginning I was trying to preserve every aspect of the Japanese, but I realized pretty quickly that that didn’t lend itself to English that flowed. I was looking at it from the perspective of a translator, or rather, imagining another translator checking my work and saying, ‘oh you missed this nuance here, and this phrase here isn’t included, what about that?’ but actually the point of translation is to supply the material to people who only speak one language, and they’re going to appreciate much more something they can read easily and quickly than something that preserves every bit of the Japanese and reads like a Google translation.

But honestly, it’s so easy to get drawn into the Japanese linguistic mechanics! For example, you probably noticed I wrote with a lot of nouns. For example, at one part I first wrote ‘after her announcement of indefinite leave’ but then changed it to ‘after announcing she would be leaving indefinitely’ because whereas in formal Japanese there are a lot of nouns, this is hard to read in English. English is all about the verbs. It took every bit of my English fluency to resist the allure of Japanese nounage, and as you can see, I still didn’t do very well. How in the world will I go the other way?

Plus, in English, verbs require subjects, but not so in Japanese! You hardly ever have to specify who or what you’re talking about, which made the Thane Camus section especially difficult. After further Googling I’m fairly certain that my original reading (and this translation) is correct, but ‘howevers’ in seemingly strange places were really making me second-guess myself, and it wasn’t clear from the sentence who’d been ordered to pay whom.

I will never laugh at the NHK interpreters again. Well, I’ll laugh, but not out of any sort of I-could-do-it-better attitude whatsoever. Besides, sometimes you interpret it perfectly and it still sounds strange! Japanese has some weird phrases. And ways of seeing things. As does everywhere else, differently.

Thanks if you read this far. I guess now I have to report on today’s progress more generally, so head over here for that.

“Bad Girl Detectives 3: Ninja Girls Romance”…LOL. I’m sorry, okay?! I had to look up almost every word in this title, and some of them weren’t even in the dictionary, haha. Plus I’ve never seen this drama or even heard of it.]