Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
From the day she uttered those comments, it was always going to be like this for Koda Kumi, so the reaction to her announcing she was pregnant again at 43 was no surprise to me.
What is it? Well, they are dragging her due to her past comments on older women getting pregnant. Back in 2008, she went on All Night Nippon radio for a hit to promote her Kingdom album and when asked about her manager’s recent marriage, she uttered the infamous line: “When women turn 35, their amniotic fluid goes rotten, so I hope they have a child before then.”
As a result of this, rather than a promotion tour, she had to go on a bit of an apology tour due to the amount of backlash. The comment was supposed to be a joke, and she did seem genuinely remorseful, which she expressed further in her 2011 auto-biography, KODA REKI.
Remembering that time is, to be honest, still hard. I’m the one who hurt others, but when I’m try to talk about it… my… my tears start to flow. I shed those tears not because my suspension was hard, but because it pains me that I hurt so many women with my words, even though I didn’t mean to. What was I doing? I was supposed to be working while thinking “I want to send out courage and dreams with my singing”. I was pathetic. How could I do that to the people who had trusted me and supported me…
That time I realized how immature and unprofessional I was. I stand and speak in front of so many people. I hadn’t thought about the responsibility and power that came with my position. But at the same time I was frightened by that responsibility and power. Is it okay for this young me to stand in front of everyone again in the future? Won’t I just make the same mistake again? I felt scared, so scared…… I kept thinking “I want to throw everything away and run away”.
Obviously though, people weren’t just going to let it go, as the interactions with the announcement will show.
Indeed, she had her first child with her husband Kenji Kuriyama (BACK-ON’s KENJI03) back in 2012, a year after she got married when she was 29. Seems like netizens were waiting for something like this.
Anyway, among the more light-hearted jabs were notes about the irony of this pregnancy impacting yet another KINGDOM tour, and that it seemed like she was trying to prove her own past comments wrong with this pregnancy.
Or as Random J put it on his blog, “My Pussy Fluid Still Bussin’ At 43”. Amazing.
But seriously, he also looks at the reasons why Japan was so outraged, and how maybe she can use this for the better.
Kumi is great with people and super personable. So, I think there would be a natural lightness and comfort to how Kumi talks about her journey as a pregnant woman in her 40s and how she feels about it. And she would most certainly be more careful with her 1000 words following Rotten Pussy Fluid Gate. But because Japan is such a risk and controversy-averse country and culture, we are not going to get this and it’s a shame.
A big name such as Kumi being open about pregnancy and creating a space for it to be discussed at scale could really go some way towards a much needed shift.
But he also correctly surmises that probably won’t be the case due to the risk-averse nature of celebrity in Japan. I do agree that it would be a hell of a way to face it and turn things into a positive.
