Drugs scandal engulfs Japanese pop star

The month of august has seen Japanese pop icon Noriko Sakai transformed from a squeaky clean idol, whose hits have included “Blue bunny” and “Please your smile”, to a ‘junkie’ with ‘yakuza links’ over a miniscule amount of narcotics found in her Tokyo apartment.

The scandal started August 4th when Sakai’s husband, professional surfer Yuichi Takaso, was arrested by Tokyo Metropolitan police after reportedly being found with amphetamines concealed in his underwear. After searching Sakai’s apartment, police reportedly found 0.008 grams of amphetamines and drugs paraphernalia with Sakai’s DNA. Police immediately issued a warrant for her arrest.

Sakai then allegedly dropped off her son with a friend and disappeared for close to a week. Attempts to track her via her mobile phone failed when signal was lost 100km west of Tokyo. Sakai would later claim she threw the broken phone away, though police have suggested she attempted to hide any evidence of the source of the drugs.

On August 7th Sakai turned herself in and was subsequently arrested for “suspicion of possession of stimulating drugs”. The results of a urine test demanded by the police came back negative, though there are claims that she was on the run just long enough for any traces to have disappeared.

Japanese society’s conservative views on drugs and love of celebrity have combined to create the scandal of the year. The media were quick to point out the arrest of Sakai’s allegedly yakuza-linked brother the previous month, also for drugs possession.  Japanese media bizarrely jumped on certain aspects of Sakai’s behavior leading up to her arrest as evidence of her drugs use. A tattoo on her ankle (in a country where body art is more associated with yakuza gangsters) and a red streak in her hair have been portrayed as symbols of some kind of drugs underworld.

Initially Takaso claimed to have received the drugs from a foreigner; a convenient scapegoat in a country that may still view a ‘ganjin’ with suspicion (in fact 2008 figures show that, of 11,025 arrests for possession of stimulants, just 3.7% were foreigners). On August 23rd Takaso was once again arrested for possession of amphetamines and this time admitted that they are his.

More recently, a drugs test on Sakai’s hair turned up a positive, though weak, result. Once again, having dyed and trimmed her hair whilst on the run, Sakai has been accused of destroying evidence. Whether such small amounts of evidence will be enough to secure a conviction is not clear, however to Sakai the damage has been done: she has already lost billions of yens worth of sponsorship deals and is no longer Japan’s sparkling pop princess.