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Composer Tetsuya Komuro Retires From Industry After Adultery Allegations

Musician and composer Tetsuya Komuro held a press conference on Friday to issue a public apology while also announcing that he will retire from the music and entertainment industry. He said that the retirement is his "way of drawing the line, in light of the public uproar." The Shunkan Bunshun magazine had published allegations of Komuro cheating on his wife Keiko with another woman on Thursday. In the press conference, he apologized to his wife, family, fans, staff, and "to many other people."

Shunkan Bunshun's article claimed that Komuro allegedly stayed at the home of the unnamed woman sometime late last December, and that he had supposedly met the same woman secretly at a hotel in Tokyo earlier this month. In response to the article, Komuro said, "I conducted myself in a way that may have invited misunderstanding. I apologize for that." He denied any sexual relations between him and the woman, but acknowledged "sleeping together" in the same room with the woman.

Komuro had his major debut as a musician for the TM Network band, which he had co-founded in 1984. The band also performed theme songs for the City Hunter and Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack anime. His first solo project was composing the music for the Vampire Hunter D OVA. Komuro reached the peak of his career in the 1990s, when he composed, arranged, and produced many chart-topping singles for such bands and artists as Namie Amuro, Tomomi Kahara, Globe, Ryōko Shinohara, and Ami Suzuki, among others. His success led to the term "Komuro boom" becoming popular in Japan.

Komuro was charged with fraud in 2008, found guilty in 2009, and given a suspended sentence of three years in prison. (The prison sentence was never enacted since he remained on good behavior for five years after the sentencing.)

Komuro composed songs for artists who performed for such anime as Nurse Angel Ririka SOS, Pretty Rhythm Rainbow Live, and A Certain Scientific Railgun S. He also composed the soundtracks for such anime as Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, Cyborg 009 The Cyborg Soldier, Zoids: Fuzors, and Punch Line.

Sources: NHK News Web, Oricon News via Hachima Kikō