Renka Iwamoto announces hiatus from Nogizaka46 after leak of photos with alleged boyfriend
Nogizaka46 has announced that Renka Iwamoto will be suspending her activities with the group after “private photos” leaked online.
Those photos show the 20-year-old, a member of Nogizaka46 since 2016 (when she was all of 12), posing with and hugging a man who is presumed to be a boyfriend. Nogizaka46 and such Sakamichi Series groups, like those in the AKB48 Group, have an quasi-official no-boyfriends policy for their members, because it destroys the illusion for their fans that they could date the idol one day. It is not clear at this point how the photos leaked.
Instead of publicly defending its young member, who is surely now suffering a lot of mental anguish over the leak, Nogizaka46 instead apologized to fans for the leak, and blamed Iwamoto’s “reckless actions.”
No doubt thinking about the loss of sales from her photo book that came out last November, the group’s management has effectively thrown her under the bus and it’s hard to see how she can recover.
No end date has been announced for Iwamoto’s hiatus and it may well end only with her graduation from the group.
Such leaks can have a mixed effect on your career. For a music idol, it can be the end (May Harada was promptly fired after photos of her kissing her boyfriend came out). Or the other hand, a sex scandal hit Rino Sashihara early on and she rode the notoriety and built a career out of it.
For an actress or model, it is possible (Elaiza Ikeda’s career was not impacted by the leak of her alleged sex tape, for instance).
We see nothing wrong about Renka Iwamoto’s photos. The ones we have seen are relatively tame (they are not even kissing). Of course she has a boyfriend. She’s an attractive 20-year-old working in the music industry. It would be crazy for her not to be fending off young men. The problem lies in a music industry that monetizes and exploits the deception of naive fans.
