Between the time the media first heard the news that SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi had been arrested for public indecency and his press conference the next day, there was a frisson of titillating anticipation over what the scandal might reveal and how Kusanagi would emerge from it. Even now, speculation runs to whether or not the 34-year-old star is a miserable guy with a drinking problem who may be totally fed up with the control-freak tendencies of his management and the soul-sapping demands of his bizarre occupation.
It certainly would have been a bombshell had he announced at the press conference that he was packing it in and moving to a mountain hut to grow sweet potatoes. But that wasn't what happened.
Kusanagi was predictably humble and apologetic, and if his answers to silly questions ("Have you gotten naked after drinking in the past?") sometimes raised eyebrows ("Once while drinking with [fellow SMAP member] Shingo Katori we got down to our underpants"), they nevertheless seemed designed to remove any doubt that he wanted to put this embarrassing incident behind him and return as quickly as possible to the life of a wind-up panda.