Kabuki star Ebizo Ichikawa the latest to join in the papakatsu dating craze

After losing his wife, the former TV announcer Mao Kobayashi, to cancer in 2017, the top kabuki actor Ebizo Ichikawa was reinvented in the public imagination as a sympathetic figure bravely battling on as a single parent.

Ebizo, who had an image as a womanizer before he settled down with Mao Kobayashi, is apparently starting to date again. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but the tabloids are relishing the details: namely that the 44-year-old star is dating more than one woman, judging from paparazzi shots, and they are much younger than him. Though one such report came out last autumn, another more recent article has asserted he is even “dating” seven women.

These stories have emerged around the same time as Maya Kobayashi, who recently remarried her “space yoga instructor” husband, made explosive claims that her sister wanted to divorce Ebizo, among other details about her cancer battle.

He is now also allegedly doing papakatsu, the new buzzwordy euphemism for compensated dating involving a young woman and older man. Essentially, the sugar daddy pays the woman for her time. But Ebizo, it is claimed, “only” gives his dates ¥20,000 (currently about $160). Some are now saying this is too little (the criticisms are not, it seems, related to the “morality” of being a sugar daddy in the first place).

The tabloids are gleefully trying to frame this as another case of a “tight-fisted” male celebrity trying to have his cake without paying for it, much like Ken Watanabe (the comedian, not the actor) and his now-notorious tryst with a woman in a public restroom. It is at odds with Ebizo’s reputation as a glamorous, stylish, and savvy man.

Ebizo is, needless to say, only in his early forties, is blessed with good looks and an athletic body, and is a celebrity to boot, so he is hardly the typical image of a papakatsu sugar daddy. We reckon he could easily attract women without needing to pay them (at least, directly), so the whole story is possibly dubious.

The tabloid media says that Ebizo himself asked a woman if she wanted to do papakatsu with him, perhaps hoping to keep the relationship business-like and easy to break off. Attitudes toward the “fee” aside, the accusation of doing papakatsu (instead of simply having affairs with multiple women) is not portrayed in the Japanese media as inherently wrong per se, since Ebizo has no formal partner.