Do we like them?

Do we like Yuya Tegoshi?

Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or acts found and some real kindness on record, held back by one 2020 stoush and a thin English-language record.

Tegoshi spent years in NEWS, one of the big Johnny and Associates idol groups, and was a fixture on Japanese TV. By his own account he knows who built that for him: he told FRIDAY that the office and the fans took him to the Tokyo Dome stage. That's a reasonably grounded thing to say about your old bosses after a messy break-up.

The messy bit came in May 2020. A weekly magazine alleged he'd been at a drinking party with several women in Tokyo in late April, while Japan was under a state of emergency and people were urged to avoid gatherings. Johnny's confirmed he attended but said some details in the report were inaccurate, and added that it had been advising him to be careful, but that he “failed to understand.” He was put on hiatus and, in June 2020, the agency cancelled his contract.

Harm check: we searched for anything he's said or done about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate, and came up empty. No campaigning, no conspiracy rabbit holes, no dodgy co-stars or studios. That's a clean result, but English-language coverage is thin, so treat it as nothing found rather than a deep audit.

His handling of the RIZIN anthem row in 2024 reflects well on him. He was booked to sing the national anthem at a fight event, but the headline fighters didn't want it, and one messaged him asking him to withdraw. He publicly declined rather than dig in, saying he would like to decline to sing it, and FRIDAY reported that online commenters praised him for taking it like an adult.

The good stuff is small but real. During his 2020 hiatus, the J-Cast outlet reported that he donated 200 kg of brown rice to a free-lunch project for single-mother households in Tokyo, and personally delivered bento by bicycle. Staff said he asked to keep helping as a volunteer driver because he had time.

Lately he's been getting on with the music. He fronts the band T.N.T, with players picked through YOSHIKI's auditions, and they have a Nippon Budokan show booked for February 2027. Nothing new and nasty on him lately, which at this point is its own kind of good news.