News

Police Will Not Prosecute Kodansha Over AKB48 Idol Tomomi Kasai's Photo

Yahoo! Japan is reporting on Tuesday that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has decided that it will not prosecute Kodansha on child pornography charges due to AKB48 idol Tomomi Kasai's photo collection book.

The book's one-page promotion in the January 12 issue of Kodansha's Young Magazine featured an "inappropriate" photo of Kasai, and that led to the issue's delay and recall. The cover of the Tomo no Koto, Suki? photobook, as previewed inside Young Magazine, would have featured Kasai nude from the waist up with a child standing behind her and concealing her nipples.

Kodansha then reissued the contents of that issue one week later without the photo (reissued version pictured at right). Kasai's photo book itself was originally scheduled to ship on February 4, but Kodansha has since cancelled the release altogether.

The police decided that because Kodansha did as much as it could to stop the circulation of the photo — by delaying the January 12 issue, recalling all copies of that issue from bookstores, reissuing the magazine after removing the photo of Kasai, and then cancelling the photo collection itself — that further investigation and prosecution was unnecessary.