The Japanese entertainment world has been shaken recently by a widespread scandal involving 11 comedians at leading agency Yoshimoto Kogyo who did side jobs for a criminal organization.
The initial scandal broke in June, when many comedians were found to have worked at a party in December 2014 by a criminal group engaged in fraud. To be fair, they apparently did not know the nature of the client who had hired them, but it once again highlighted the long-suspected connections between organized crime and comedy in Japan -- a link encapsulated by the shock retirement of Shinsuke Shimada in ...
