NGT48 Assault Case

Oh by the way, since I have heard someone mention that one article from Sumai, here is a translation of it that I was preparing, it's a quick analysis of the claim by the management, done by someone whose job is renting out houses, also it includes an insight of how things actually works in the business. If interested, there's also a follow-up blog post by the same author (link here) expanding on the same argument that was published some time later, after the main article gained attention on matome sites (and more so on Twitter, I should add).

Spoiler: Translation

Two aspects about the NGT48 controversy seen as questionable by a former real estate agent

For the incident which saw the member of Niigata's idol group NGT48 as the victim of an assault right in front of her own apartment, it has been almost 1 month since news broke about it.

Yet in spite of that, no clear explanation has been provided yet regarding the course of events, while on the other hand, informations of mixed authenticity have been pouring in from media outlets of different standing, all of which has contributed to a chaotic kind of situation.

The scene in which this incident took place is a block of flats that the group's management had been renting to serve as a dormitory for the members. But what is being reported on media is something that happened in a context which would be normally inconceivable, when it comes to real estate transactions.

As such, this time, we'll then try to explore the reports surrounding today's controversy through the lenses of a writer who used to work as a real estate agent.

▮ Examining the report that "The offender was renting a room on the other side of that of the victim"

Within NGT48, it appears that a great majority of the members who aren't native of Niigata itself are living inside of a block of flats which the group's management company had rented up as a "dormitory".

The victim testified that she suffered a physical aggression from a man who came out from an apartment on the opposite side as her own, but one of the big points of issue here is who exactly used to be living in that specific apartment.

A part of tabloid magazines had written that "This apartment was once the residence of a NGT48 member who is now suspected as being involved in the incident, but she has moved out 1 year and a half ago already, and the culprits had been renting it at present."

It seems like the management ended up giving their acknowledgement of that, but, putting it clearly, could such a kind of thing be possible in reality?

▮ Contracts also include corporate contracts, along with individual contracts

When it comes to house rental contracts, things are broadly split in two categories: individual contracts, and corporate contracts, and with this one being a dormitory, in today's instance it is supposed it was a corporate contract that was signed.

If this is the case, it means that, according to the contract, the tenant would then be the management company, AKS. Because of it, there wouldn't be any necessity for them to rescind the contract for the apartments, just because a certain member had moved out of it.

Due to problems related to the burdens of rent costs, it is usually the norm for the contract to be terminated at the same time as someone moves out of the residence. But since they are using this place as a dormitory for a popular idol group, there's also problems related to the safety and privacy of the members that they must necessarily be mindful about.

▮ Once an advance notice of contract termination is issued, informations about the property are publicly listed

In the instance a rental contract is about to be terminated, a notice of it should be issued by the tenant within 1 month (or more rarely, 2 months) ahead of the day they'd effectively move out.

From the standpoint of the landlord, the rent income would be reduced to zero during the period the apartment is left vacant, and so for this reason they find themselves forced to find a new occupant as soon as possible.

Because of this, as soon as an advance notice of contract termination is issued, the great majority of the landlords immediately list details of the property and begin accepting new takers (this is why, as a common practice, once a contract termination notice is issued, it can't be withdrawn)

Should AKS issue a notice of contract termination to the landlord, property details would soon after be recorded on specialized sites for people in the business, making it possible for real estate agents all over Japan to view it. Although once there, it would have been shown with a description such as -- speaking from memories -- "4th floor of a 7 story building", in a way that wouldn't make it possible to identify the apartment's location itself. (The system, now, is of the kind where you'll first need to check with the landlord's intermediary company, in order to get to know anything)

If this is a building property where security and living environment are well arranged, enough for a popular idol group to make it their own dormitory, everyone would presumably want to rent a place there. This means that, if a notice of a vacant room inside such a flat were to be issued, a fierce competiton would thus follow.

▮ Is it really bad to make requests like "Let me know when there's a free room in building 〇〇"?

If you run a business dealing with house rentals, it would happen several times that you'll receive requests such as "Once there's a free room in building 〇〇, let me know", but any employee worth their salt would reject the request in any instance.

The reason for this is, since there's no way to know when informations of contract termination may be issued, and in the midst of a busy schedule as this, one just can't afford to keep tabs on a single specific block of flats out of many countless building properties.

Anyone who's a real estate agent in charge of managing such kinds of apartment buildings would understand it immediately, but if any talk telling that "The apartment on the other side of the one of some certain NGT member is becoming vacant" were to be leaked to outsiders, it would end up violating the Buildings Transaction Business Law.

Real estate agents tend to be especially sensible about any "business law infringements" (albeit they tend to do anything, if it's outside of that), which makes it unthinkable that informations related to a member could be leaked from a person within the business.

▮ Two problems that are considered to have happened behind

Given what it's written above, if the reports should be presumed to be the truth, it means that the following 2 issues must have occurred in this event's background.

Both of them are difficult to imagine, but this is also a situation which could happen only if both of the conditions are satisfied.

║ The management company terminated the contract for the apartment across that of the member

If the contract is terminated for a vacant apartment, it means another person may get to enter inside of it.

As it is evident, there will be problems in terms of privacy and safety if a stranger would get inside of a place where multiple members of a popular idol group are conducting their everyday lives. Yet regardless of this, the management still decided to cancel the contract for said apartment.

It should be said that the rent price for a single-room apartment complex in the city of Niigata isn't that expensive.

Could it be possible that they chose to prioritize reducing fee costs by a few ten thousands yen a month, over the safety of members themselves?

║ The perpetrators already knew about the member's internal informations

When it comes to informations that a room is about to get vacant, it is impossible to predict them in advance. In addition, once a preliminary notice of contract termination is issued, informations are promptly listed, turning it into a scramble for whoever takes it the fastest.

It is thus a difficult thing to keep in reserve what is a specific apartment inside of a specific building.

Furthermore, it is necessary for someone to be already aware of what floor the member is living on, and it's simply impossible unless they first get ahold of internal informations through some way of another quite ahead of time.

▮ What is lies, and what is truth? Let's consider it inside our own mind

This is all, here we have taken the informations that are currently being reported, and tried to examine it in as objective a way as possible, from the perspective of a real estate agent.

In today's incident, in addition to the declarations from the management company itself, various kind of media outlets also mixed in -- such as NHK, commercial television, local newspapers, entertainment newspapers, and weekly tabloids -- with the result that informations of all sorts are now becoming jumbled together.
However, with apparently so many different views and intentions around, and the content changing completely depending on what media outlet is communicating it, it is risky to believe it all at face value.

Taking in consideration the informations that have been provided this time, please consider inside your own mind what is the truth.

(As an aside, the incident first became publicly known on January 8th through an internal whistleblowing by the victim, but the perpetrators, after not being presecuted, had been released by December 28th. If we should assume that the news is true that the perpetrators are renting an apartment across that of the victim... Well, that's frightening)

---
Source: https://sumaiweb.jp/articles/140523

 

One could ask that question of 3 or 4 people in this thread.

 

Tried using google translate on 2ch.sc:

"【Truth】 The fact that Inferno and Bun Hun and NGT administration planned to shoot scandal photos of Yamaguchi and leave Yamaguchi planned the truth"
""AKB famous old gee Otaku appeal of tears "What is now for the behavior for Men? Please do not buy according to conscience""
" Yamaguchi Masahari is okay and I do not like to follow up, but if I do the same thing from other men, it seems to be bullying or fussy?"
... Yeah, okay.

 

It’s a good Fuller question...

 

I wonder how much, if any, the "out in the boonies" nature of Niigata affected how the real estate company and NGT management handled this. I note that in the followup post, despite doubling down on his original conclusion (and getting what Mahohon said wrong as usual), he does admit that he oversimplified matters, and if the leasing company is of a different kind direct inquiries from buyers are possible.

 

I can't speak for others, but I saw that NGT had something new going on, different from other 48 groups. I didn't feel stuck in the past supporting them. I see now it wasn't much different after all

 

The real estate agent is an interesting angle, but his POV doesn't really bring anything normal people wouldn't know imo

Privacy is pretty big in Japan, and many members live at home and carry their lives normally, ergo I don't think he should put too much stock into
accommodation being so special that people would fight over it. Being in the boonies is definitely a big factor when you look at vacancy rates in Niigata. The three wards where the former dorm is most likely to be located (Higashi, Chuo, Konan) have vacancy rates from 17-25%, so people are not beating each other up over housing me thinks. A scramble situation would only occur if literally all the wotas knew it is THEE NGT dorm, so it doesn't paint a complete picture.

Even without how he got to the apartment in the first place -like the author notes in his follow-up- it is pretty weird to live there and never run into each other especially if you live right next to each other. This is also quite a elaborate plan setup with renting rooms and everything just so they can have a word with her about backing off their oshimen (I think this is what most here believe to be the case at this point?). If it was me I would pretend to run into her "coincidentally" a few times and go from there, not go in charging like a bull, anyways I'll stop before people accuse me of diluting again.

Spoiler

I don't want to make this too long so just a few points

1. Article says 11.3 Million of CFO salary is restricted stocks, meaning he has to stay within the company for certain number of years until it fully vest on a scheduled basis. AKA most of his income is tied to actual performance of company and he has to stay long time.
2. The stock is still down about 40-50% from high since August, wiping out around 30Bil of value. If they are doing so awesomely fantastic wouldn't you think the stocks should be doing well too?
3. They are bleeding monthly average users quarter after quarter. How long does this keep up until they can't squeeze their current customer base?
4. The publishing game is cyclical. Most of what they sold in 2018 were planned and developed WAY before 2018. Obviously people are not seeing great results from what they were PLANning in 2018.
5. Look at their 2019 Full year projection, a measly 6 Billion! And before that? 7 billion in 2017 and 7.5 billion in 2018. Their expense in 2018 was 5.5 bil, and if no reductions are made they would ultimately make a 500mil in 2019, a Far Cry from 2bil in 2018. If your take home pay is suddenly cut by 75%, i would assume you would do some "belt tightening" too and not continue to support a life style you had before

end rant

 

Your initial argument was slow business resulting in layoffs, which was in response to the idea of consumer protesting. However the financials I provided you showed it was their most profitable year, meaning consumers were buying.

There's not really a point to cherry picking my comment to suit your narrative as it pretty much invites me to repeat myself as my initial response already addresses your rebuttal. This thread doesn't need any more circular arguments. I also brought it back to the main topic, perhaps we ought to keep it there.

 

But I still think it’s good to discuss these tweets because for people who didn’t follow the group before the case or for k-pop fans who only started to follow 48G recently, we lack the language and knowledge so we take these tweets very seriously.

I’m flattered to be honest. I’ve been shadowing this forum for a while so coming from a kpop background it feels good to be considered a native 48G fan already lol
Do you have someone in mind?

 

My opinion on the management
- Dating is not an issue. Would it be any difference if Nishigata or Tano was in friendly/economic relationship, not romantic, with Joe Gang? Would it be any problem but personal problem to the dating member if the lover were a normal unproblematic man? The answer to both question definitely is "No". The very problem is not the type of relationship but the type of the person the member has close relationship with. Imagine Tano has a female friend who is a mamasan, will it be not problematic?

- Removing election barely does anything. Without election, will members not have to fight for senbatsu spots on other singles? Will the internal rivalry go away or lessened hugely? Even if there is no election, the every changing senbatsu system will always result the incentive to take down more popular members so you can shine brighter. What if the internal rivalry completely go away? Will the bullying come to an eternal end too? Look at K-pop. Is there any internal rivalry within the group? A member can wholeheartedly trust other members because all members go up and down together. Sound good, right? So, there is no bullying in K-pop, right? Definitely NO. A member may be pressured to do what she doesn't want for the "team" and, if she refuses, she is selfish bitch and may be ostracized. All other members will jointly behave as if she is invisible off camera. Besides, imagine you be a K-pop idol and know a fellow member has hidden something very scandalous. That's like living next to a ticking bomb.

- A closer watch on members' personal lives and behaviors is preferable. Women are generally gossipy and NGT has only 40 something members so, in most cases, it's not hard to detect via managers/captains if any member is putting herself in or undergoing a problem. And, the management should quickly respond.

- I guess the investigation committee is meant to compromise between members. Now, it must be a friction between Team N3 and Team G, an unhealthy working environment. The purpose of the committee possibly is to find a compromised explanation for both sides (thus, no identity revelation to the public). (The story in Team N3 from Tano's side and the story in Team G from Maho's side must be different and, likely, neither story is completely true or false.)

Nishigata, Tano and Ogino? Joe could easily know which apartment NGT's members lived and when would any room be available. I don't think he wanted a specific room, just any room on the same floor as NGT's members.

Definitely not weird. He must have a main living quarter elsewhere, that room was mere a secondary place he lived now and then.
A columnist wrote, when she lived in Japan, she found out a whole family of 2 kids lived in a room next to her after almost a year as they were very quiet.

 

Spoiler

Yes my man, anytime people actually dig in to the meat of content and not look at just a top line number, that is a cherry picking
You haven't really proven your "corporate greed" stance btw. Do you get the impression from this that everything is going dandy and layoff is not because business was/is slowing but people high up want more MONEYS?

That depends on the intentions. A "whole family of 2 kids" (sorry what does this even mean?!) living across a random columnist is not the same as a wota who intentionally rents across an idol for *some* purpose. i always feel like people respond to me with bad analogies

 

It would still be an issue for a lot of fans. Bunshun's use of the list of 8 names of members connected to fans wouldn't be much of an attempt to distract from their own part in the assault if there was no problems with members dating. But yeah, the biggest problem is that management is perceived as having responded to Maho's complaints as if she was overreacting and it was a simple relationship rather than a relationship with problematic fans so now they can't admit knowing about it as those fans are linked to voting fraud, ticket and gifts resale, doxxing, intimidation, harassment and are working for a tabloid.

To quote Inigo Montoya: "That word. I don't think it means what you think it means." There's nothing problematic with being or knowing a mamasan. Hiragana Oshi even has a bit where a member plays one to discuss individual members. As for what you probably meant, there are members who kept their ties/friendships with former members who ended up or allegedly passed through the sex industry.

From what I've seen, those guys are definitely not the quiet type.

 

It is cherry picking if it's one small part of a larger post you mostly ignored, which by the way I never disclosed what I thought his entire bonus was made of. You're also deflecting and derailing by trying to get me to argue about whether or not layoffs are corporate greed, which Activision's business practices aren't really relevant to the thread. I said something because you are incorrect about why the layoffs happened and I brought articles to back it up, but this is really off topic at this point and shouldn't even be an argument you're trying to bait. Your initial statement was wrong, trying to win a new argument about Activision with me won't change that.

The point should be, if at all still relevant since the topic has cooled, is consumer protesting viable in Japan and for this situation.

Lastly, I'm pointing out your tactics here because you've been using them in nearly all your posts and I want you to know they aren't unnoticed.

I apologize for continuing this tangent, I do believe this will be the last of it from me. I look forward to future news about Maho being favorable, I hope

 

The difference between that situation and this, however, is that Mahohon complained of new, noisy neighbours. (Also old noisy neighbours. Noisy neighbours is a common theme, although some of them were probably members.)

Which is to say, she knew they'd moved in, so why are we still trying to figure out how she didn't know? "But she said a member lived there!" Yeah, past tense. All the apartments on that floor should have been reserved for members, but for some reason they weren't. That's a major screwup, and deserves mentioning and investigating.

Why would she be uber cautious entering her apartment every time if she thought the only people on that floor were members?

 

We already argued about how the past tense in the statement is not even close to be as definite as you say it is but I'm not going to rehash that again and go along with your conclusions for the following:

If she "knew they'd moved in", why even mention that a member lived there? I mean, if she knew Ayakani had moved out and she was surprised to see some guy coming out of there, it would makes sense to mention that a member used to live there as that's what she associates that apartment with and that to her knowledge, no one else has been living there since. But if she did know someone had moved in, talking about an unrelated member that used to live there is pointless information. She would have said nothing or that it was the apartment of some guy who moved in recently.

 

We only have management and bunshun's words that the apartment opposite Maho was rented by Jo or another one of his gang and I don't consider them to be particularly credible sources. The jury is still out on that.

Because Maho is a naturally cautious person.

 

That it "isn't definite" was exactly the point. It's a serious accusation to make based on a statement that is at best ambiguous.

I gave one reason in the post you just quoted: That room should have been reserved for members rather than being leased to an outsider. It's not the only possible reason. (She also said a different member lived there, which I assume means different from the ~3 she was told leaked her info.)

And clearly her caution was justified. But I think she knew it was justified before the attack. I think she was aware that outsiders had access to that floor, even (perhaps) renting rooms there. Either because it was no longer(?) reserved for just members, or I guess it could also be that members were bringing outsiders up to their rooms (the original theory). But she doesn't accuse them of the latter. Her problem, repeated over and over, is that members' personal, private information was leaked, not that members provided the attackers with access to her apartment.

 

Maho accuses them of breaking the love ban rule, I think it's reasonable to conclude that involves bringing guys back to their rooms for sexy fun times.

Maybe Kitagawa Jo or kasei or another gang member did hire the room opposite Maho but I think it's a ludicrous theory cooked up by bunshun and seized on by management to save Nishigata, Tano and perhaps others. I am open to be corrected but another, more credible source is needed.

That is the narrative that bunshun and/or management were pushing and their credibility is rather low but you seem to want to line up with that. Maho on the other hand seems to think that one or more members had ill intent towards her and I think it's also reasonable to agree with that... unless Maho makes a statement to clarify or correct what she's said and implied. I also don't underestimate how malicious young women can be if they perceive that their love life (or career) is being messed with by some "goody-twoshoes" vice-captain.

Again we are at an impasse. It seems that neither one of us will convince the other without further evidence coming out.

 

Currently, we are at the end of Season 6 and in the 4 month waiting gap to Season 7... The Simpsons, Who Shot Mr. Burns?


What a fun year...