Out of all the members of Hey! Say! JUMP, Morimoto Ryutarou would honestly be the last one I would think of to have trouble with an obsessive fan. But the most recent news reports about HSJ say otherwise.
I'm sure everyone in the HSJ fandom has already heard about Ryutarou getting his cell phone stolen. It occurred as he was meeting up with a fan, a 17 year old boy, who had been stalking him for some months now. The boy threatened him by saying he had a knife and when Ryutarou left to call his parents the boy stole his cell phone. The police were able to trace the phone and caught the boy.
Tokyo Graph article (English)
I have to say it wasn't the best of ideas for Ryutarou to have gone alone to face this boy. If he wasn't going to bring one of his parents he should have at least brought a friend or two. I guess this will be a lessoned learned, though I think the police really should have done something after the Morimoto's reported the boy back in December.
After reading some of the reactions to the news article I would like to point out that it is not uncommon for there to be children walking around Tokyo by themselves. As I commute to and from the city almost daily I've seen children alone on the trains several times, and not all of them looked to be commuting from school either. And IIRC, there was an English article about Johnny's that I read where someone from the Johnny's Agency was asked about the age limit for boys to join and instead of an age he answered that they had to be old enough to travel on the trains alone. So from that it can be assumed that from nine years old and older it's considered safe for children to travel without a guardian in Japan. So it would not really seem out of place for Ryutarou to be out in the city alone, especially as it was only as far as a restaurant near his home.
In the end though like all good fans, I'm happy to hear that Ryutarou is safe and sorry that he had to deal with something like this. Especially since he's still so young.
No comments:
Post a Comment