Six years ago this month, the public learned that Japan's most popular male showbiz personality, Takuya Kimura, was set to marry former singing idol Shizuka Kudo, already pregnant with his child at the time.
The press wondered how marriage and fatherhood would affect the career of a star who had been voted Japan's sexiest man half dozen years in a row by readers of the weekly fashion magazine an-an, not to mention the fortunes of SMAP, the aging idol boy band he belonged to (and still does).
Though getting married doesn't stunt a male star's prospects as much as a female star's, idols are a different breed since their appeal among members of the opposite sex is directly linked to their availability.