The mother of a reality TV star who killed herself after she was cyberbullied has filed a lawsuit against the companies behind the show for not fulfilling their duty to protect the cast.
Hana Kimura, 22, a professional wrestler who was a cast member of the popular reality show Terrace House, killed herself in May 2020 after being subject to intense harassment and abuse through social media by people who watched the show.
Her mother, Kyoko, 52, filed a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court on December 6 with 142 million yens and $1 million in compensation.
I wanted to avoid a court case, but I had to file the lawsuit because no sincere response was made by the defendant companies, Kimura said at a news conference after the lawsuit was filed. I do not want any more exploitation of the dreams of young people. The companies named in the suit are the broadcaster Fuji Television Network Inc., the production company E&W Inc. and East Factory Inc., which took over production operations from E&W. When Terrace House was broadcast, E&W was known as East Entertainment Inc.
The plaintiffs argue that the Terrace House producers created a structure that made cast members easy targets by aggressively publicizing that the show was real. The show's nature meant the cast were put in the firing line, according to the lawsuit. It said the producers had a responsibility to deal with any backlash or defamation that was generated by monitoring the physical and psychological health of Hana during the shooting, editing and streaming of the program.
In March 2021, the Broadcast and Human Rights Committee of the Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization BPO highlighted ethical problems with the program. It stopped short of concluding that Hana's human rights had been violated because some action had been taken, such as providing mental health care before the show aired.
The lawsuit said cast members who viewed and reacted to footage from the show would often make negative comments about what Hana did or said in the program and had encouraged the backlash on social media.
Kimura said the producers treated cast members like they were disposable.
If I were in her position, I would not have been able to do the same thing if a family member or someone I loved appeared on the program, Kimura said. The three defendants companies didn't say anything about it, saying they had yet to receive the lawsuit.
In a separate lawsuit last year, a Tokyo court ruled in favor of Kimura in favor of the man, who was ordered to pay 1.29 million yen for posting hateful messages about Hana on Twitter.