Just singing in the park, officer?

[mbarker]

This looks to be a media circus. I hadn't even gotten home today and people were telling me about our SMAP member. He's a 34-year-old member of a pop band that is very well-known and rich here in Japan.  According to news reports - and they are breaking into programming to  let us know --  at about 2:30 or 3 AM this morning, the police found him sitting in a park in an upscale part of Tokyo.  He was singing, drunk, and naked.

So the police wrapped him in a grey sheet  and took him in.  They keep showing him this afternoon coming out of the police station and getting in a car, so I suppose they've released him for now.

But the media is in full chase, trying to figure out what's going on.  I'm leaning towards there being something besides just drinking --  after all, how many drunks do you know who go out in a park  and try karaoke au natural? It's too late for Sakura, and still a bit cool for trying to beat the heat. So what pushed him into this?

Comments

So what pushed him into this?

[bookmobiler.livejournal.com]

This is just a guess.

A barely recognized need for attention?

Re: So what pushed him into this?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Who knows? He has now made a public statement saying that he doesn't remember anything, and he's very sorry about the whole incident. Given that several sponsors have already pulled advertising that he is in, this isn't too surprising.

It does seem like some kind of plea for attention. It may well be that this young man has gotten a high-profile career but little or no meaningful human interaction.

I was fascinated by one of the advertisers commenting that they were pulling the ads because this was disgusting. I'm not sure that's a reasonable reaction to someone being naked. As far as I have heard, he wasn't chasing young girls or anything, he was just sitting in the park. He could have done much more disgusting things, I think.

One theory that's being talked about a lot is that he was so drunk that he thought he was in his nearby apartment, and just took his clothes off as he would in his apartment. I'm not sure that that explains his singing, although I suppose some people do sit in their apartment naked and sing.

It's still chewing up a lot of media time. And seems unlikely to be explained, although it may shoot his career and the rest of the band.