Do we like them?

Do we like Yuya Tegoshi?

Our score: 6 out of 10. No harmful words or company found, but the good-person record is a mix of a 2020 rule-bending row and not much verified good.

Tegoshi was a member of the Johnny's group NEWS for years before 2020, when he was 32 and his career took a hard turn. The agency announced a hiatus for him on 26 May that year, then cancelled his contract on 19 June. He has been a solo act since.

The trigger was a weekly magazine report alleging he attended drinking parties with women during the Tokyo state of emergency. The agency said some details of that report were wrong, but also said it had warned him to be careful and that he “failed to understand”. So the row was about ignoring COVID stay-home rules, not about anything he said about other people.

He fronted a press conference on 23 June, thanked the agency and NEWS fans, and said he loved the group. Then in August 2020 he released a book and apologised on YouTube for naming other entertainers tied to rumours, saying he had dragged people into scandal. It reads as a bloke who got a bit carried away and then owned it.

On the harm test, we found nothing: no campaigning against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or public health, and no run of films or projects with people who push that stuff. The coverage is mostly pop-industry news, so the record is thin, and thin is not the same as proven clean. We left out a reported 2021 remark about K-pop acts because we could not open a page to check it.

The recent stuff is all music. His eighth solo tour, SUPER STAR, was announced in February 2026 for nine venues, finishing in Tokyo on 12 September. That is a working musician building a solo career five years after leaving the big agency.

On the good stuff, we could not find a verified charity, cause or act of kindness in reliable reporting, so we are not going to invent one. A fan base that has stuck with him through a messy exit says something, but it is not a record we can cite.