Do we like Yuya Tegoshi?
Our score: 6 out of 10. Nothing harmful found and no pattern of mistreating people, but the record is thin and no real good deeds turned up either.
Tegoshi was a member of the Japanese group NEWS under the huge Johnny & Associates talent agency until June 2020, when the agency cancelled his contract. NEWS carried on as a trio. That exit is the story that defines him, and it came out of a lockdown row.
In May 2020 a weekly magazine reported that he had been at a late-April drinking party with several women in Tokyo, while Japan was under a state of emergency asking people to avoid gatherings. Johnny's confirmed the report on 26 May, said some details were wrong, and put him on hiatus. The agency said it had warned him to be careful and that he “failed to understand”.
Less than a month later, on 19 June, the agency announced his contract was cancelled. At a press conference on 23 June he said many reports didn't match the facts and that he wanted to set the record straight. He said he had been talking with his manager and executives since March about leaving, and that he wanted to step up another level.
Then came the book. In August 2020 he released AVALANCHE and named female entertainers he'd been linked to in the past. Five days later he apologised on YouTube, saying it had caused trouble for them and for fans, and admitting that being fully open isn't always the right call. Fair credit for owning it quickly, but it was a clumsy move that dragged other people into the spotlight.
On the harm check, searches on his views about LGBTQ+ people, women, vaccines or politics came up empty, so there is no slide into grievance to report. The only other flare-up we found was a 2023 angry post on X about a live show's staging, which he apologised for the next day. We also found no court cases and no documented charity work, and that's honestly the whole list. Nothing new on him lately that we could verify.
So: a pop star who got caught breaking pandemic etiquette, lost his job over it, and made one misjudged book. That's a stain, not a pattern, and nothing here suggests he pushes harm. We'd be comfortable cheering him on, with the caveat that there's not much record of him using his platform for others.