When the weeklies go to war, nobody's safe.

In the Feb. 21 installment of this column, we took up the topic of Shukan Shincho magazine's 60th anniversary, introducing excerpts from its inaugural issue of Feb. 19, 1956, a reproduction of which was nested inside the regular magazine.

While Shincho was busily engaged in a full month of self-congratulatory activities, its crosstown rival Shukan Bunshun was issuing a salvo of major scoops, one of which led to the resignation of economy minister Akira Amari.

The background of Bunshun's blockbusters, and particularly the aggressive policies of its recently reinstated editor Manabu Shintani, was covered in our column of March 6. The same topic was subsequently made the subject of a 12-page article in the April issue of Tsukuru magazine.

"The ways in which popular journalism gets readers involved," writer Hiroyuki Shinoda observed in Tsukuru, "is surprisingly important."

Bunshun's string of scoops led many media watchers to speculate that if Shukan Shincho wanted to avoid being upstaged, it would have to come up with something big, and soon.

"Shincho's editor told the writers, if you can't bring in a scoop, don't bother coming back to the office," was how one freelance magazine journalist confided to me in an email.

And so it came to pass that the main story in Shincho's issue of March 31 was a five-page "special feature" titled "Dissatisfied with monogamy: Ototake-kun's extramarital affairs with five women."

"Ototake-kun" — that is, 39-year-old Hirotada Ototake — probably doesn't fit anyone's preconception of a modern-day Casanova. He was born with tetra-amelia, a congenital condition leaving him almost without arms and legs.

Ototake's inspiring autobiography, titled "Gotai Fumanzoku" ("No One's Perfect"), was released by publishing giant Kodansha in 1998 while he was still a student at Waseda University. The book made him an overnight celebrity and has sold at least 4.5 million copies.

Bright and charismatic, Ototake became Japan's most eloquent advocate for people with disabilities. From February 2013 until the end of last year he served as a salaried member of the Tokyo board of education, and there was talk in political circles about his running for a seat in the upcoming elections for the national Diet. He has even voiced the ambition of someday becoming governor of Tokyo.

The Shukan Shincho article in question noted that in December Ototake had been seen boarding Air France flight 293 bound for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, accompanied by an attractive Japanese woman — not his wife — who appeared to be in her 20s.

It turned out that the woman was only the latest of at least five extramarital love interests claimed by the magazine. Ototake, who married a Waseda schoolmate in 2001 and has since fathered two sons and a daughter, did not deny the allegations.

For those who read Ototake's book, perhaps his philandering should not come as a complete surprise, as he alluded in several passages to a healthy interest in the opposite sex.

Ototake credited a girl who wrote him letters in middle school for giving him "a lot more courage when it comes to love." He admitted he wasn't able to fully reciprocate, but he did leave her with a keepsake of their puppy love: the second button from his school blazer ("the one girls ask boys for at graduation because it's nearest the heart").

"I'm not saying that a disability is never an issue when it comes to love," he wrote in the English translation of his book. In another passage he philosophizes, "Love never goes exactly as you want. And besides, who'd be attracted in the first place to somebody who's so down on themselves? 'I'm disabled, so what can I expect. Women only feel sorry for me. I don't stand a chance.' That's a pretty effective way of driving away the love you might have found."

Aside from their sometimes questionable credibility, however, another problem with tabloid scoops is that even when the stories are handled with a degree of sensitivity and responsible fact-checking — as may very well be the case with Shukan Shincho's article — they invariably open the floodgates to the most salacious forms of gossip and innuendo.

Just five days after the appearance of the story in Shukan Shincho, Ototake's private life was dissected by Flash (April 12), in a three-page article titled "The immoral educator, Ototake-kun: The life of debauchery behind the smiling face."

He was basically portrayed as an educator by day and a satyr by night.

Remarks from "a person in the media" cited his love of black humor and spicy stories. "A greedy woman might be tempted to give him a try," the source remarked. While on a trip to Bangkok, Ototake reportedly patronized a go-go bar with take-out hostesses.

Another source said to be "close to Ototake" was quoted as saying that on trips to regional cities Ototake regularly availed himself of deriheru ("delivery health," i.e., call girl services). He also made a reference to the size of a certain physical attribute that we will refrain from mentioning here, except to say that when the topic was alluded to recently during the U.S. Republican presidential primary campaign, most voters were appalled.

A Shinjuku businessman told Flash how, after live performances by his rock band Cowperking, Ototake would be "pursued by women as if he were a celebrity entertainer."

How, then, does one understand the man? Perhaps 18 years on from his first book, Ototake has been engaged in field research for the next one. And considering the near-universal popularity of the subject matter, there's a good chance it will outsell his previous book by a considerable margin.