Earlier in the day NGT48 member Maho Yamaguchi appeared on Showroom, a live broadcast where fans can interact with various 48 members mostly used for asking questions.

Fans were quite excited for this, seeing as back in December 2018 Yamaguchi took a hiatus from SNS. Shortly before the Showroom live she made a tweet reassuring fans that were mini SNS hiatus was just from stress, later stating that she actually lost 4kg in just two weeks. Things became a bit ominous when she went on to state

“anyone would have suffered weight loss if they found themselves in this situation, so it’s alright”

When her Showroom began a somber looking Yamaguchi began to speak about an incident that happened to her roughly a month ago. Not going into exact details, she talked about members personal information being leaked, and how members who do bad things aren’t being punished for it.

” I can’t help but wonder what would would have happened if I had ended up getting killed instead.”

Yamaguchi went on to say she wanted to speak out earlier on this, but they (management) promised to solve things for her. But according to Yamaguchi absolutely nothing was done. Right as she continued to speak the stream was suddenly cut off. Only lasting just under 4 minutes, the original video can be seen here
(Video deleted)

After management cut her Showroom live, she took to Twitter and directly talked about what happened to her. In December after coming home from a theater show, she was assaulted by two men while on her way home. She was told by the two men that one of her group mates revealed to them when she would be returning home, and also shared her personal address and apartment number.

In other (also deleted) tweets she stated that she was very reluctant to speak about the incident, not wanting to cause trouble or drama for her group and the people that supported her through this ordeal.

Yamaguchi doesn’t want anyone to hate on the group, and understand how hard the girls work. She doesn’t want any girl to go through the same ordeal as her, which is why she wants to tell the truth. She sadly went on to say “It’s fine if it’s just me crying, but seeing everyone else cry, feel frustrated and uneasy, I want to do something about it”

Etsuro Imamura, the theater manager for NGT48, is directly being blamed for the handling of the entire situation. “Since Imamura-san’s a man, he probably just doesn’t understand the fear that we have to grow up with as women”.

In another deleted tweet, Yamaguchi went into further detail on her horrible assault. She stated that she’s always very cautious when going home alone, and on the day of the assault she checked to see if anyone was in the external corridor before entering her apartment. Seeing no one, she entered her apartment and quickly tried to close the door but a hand suddenly came out from the other side.

The man opened the door by force, and grabbed Yamaguchi by the face so hard she almost fell to the floor. While desperately trying to shove him away she thought to herself “If I give up now, I’m gonna get myself killed“.

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