Japan pop idol shaves head in regret of dating

A J-pop starlet, who shaved her head and issued a tearful YouTube apology after spending the night with a man, was scrambling Friday to stitch up the damaged girl-next-door image of all-female group AKB48.

As pictures of the roughly-shorn head of Minami Minegishi, 20, were plastered over national newspapers, Japan’s Twitter scene was abuzz Friday over news that the pop princess had broken the band’s cardinal rule: No Dating.

“I don’t believe just doing this means I can be forgiven. But the first thing I thought was that I don’t want to quit AKB48,”

she says in the video, posted to the bands YouTube channel. The apology amassed more than 4 million hits in one day.

Minegishi was snapped by a local tabloid magazine on Thursday, leaving the apartment of Alan Shirahama, a dancer of the popular boy band Exile.

Referring to her affair as “thoughtless and immature,” she said, “If it is possible, I wish from the bottom of my heart to stay in the band. Everything I did is entirely my fault, I am so sorry.”

AKB48, made of girls ranging between early teens and mid-20s, is doing a very lucrative business with a great access to the public.

And it holds an annual all- member election, in which fans can vote for their most favored ones. According to the result, girls rotate in and out of the public eye.

In exchange of their fame, however, they have strict rules to keep, which include no dating. Otherwise, they could be demoted to a regional sub-group as a punishment.

That was exactly what happened to another group member Rino Sashihara, 20, when she chitchatted about her history with a boy in June last year.

While the band seems to focus on innocent girl image, what it apparently sells is its sex appeal, In a television commercial, the girls passed candy from mouth to mouth, hinting at homosexuality.

And recently another girl was involved in a controversy over child pornography, as she released her naked photo with her breasts cupped by a Caucasian child.