What really caused Ako Kawada to take her own life? All sorts of rumors started floating about when TV presenter Ako Kawada was found dead in her white Mercedes Benz parked next to a warehouse in Tokyo's Minato-ku on May 26. The 29-year-old small screen personality who killed herself by inhaling toxic fumes was rumored to have been targeted by a stalker, been depressed at approaching 30 -- an age regarded by many as a "use-by" date for female presenters on TV in Japan -- and all sorts of other woes.
But spreading wildest around the Internet and among Japan’s tabloid media are the whispers of Kawada suffering from a broken heart. "If the talk about her talent agency putting pressure on her to quit the business spreads any further, it could cause problems regarding trust throughout the entire industry," a top manager at a major TV production company tells Sunday Mainichi, a reputable current affairs weekly put out by the Mainichi Newspapers. "The Japan Association of Musical Enterprises is an organization that deals with problems in the industry and it should be working out what exactly happened with Kawada."
>>966 Most innuendo surrounding Kawada's suicide has focused on a man the weekly indentifies only as "Mr. X," an employee of production company K Dash, one of Japan’s leading talent agencies that includes such luminaries as Oscar-nominated Ken Watanabe on its books.
"Some of the sports newspapers have reported that there was nothing between Kawada and Mr. X, but some say those reports came about because the print media fears the power Mr. X wields within the industry," an insider from a commercial TV network tells Keichiro Wada writing for Sunday Mainichi. "Kawada quit her job at TBS at the end of March last year and became a freelancer because Mr. X talked her into it. Everybody around knew the two of them were seeing each other at that time." Sunday Mainichi (6/15)A reporter on the entertainment beat elaborates. "Mr. X is a good-looking guy who comes across as being sweet and he’s a fine worker who has a lot of pull in casting for TV programs. If someone like that prompts you to make a career move by promising to look after you, most people would go along with it," the insider says. "Some were saying that he and Kawada were close enough for marriage to be on the books." But anything that may have been going on between Mr. X and Kawada was finished by the end of the year, apparently with the dashing production company beau calling things off, but the weekly conceding that nobody in the media is sure of what really happened. (Mainichi Japan) June 6, 2008
彼はこの記事の題を「テレビスターの失恋の末の悲劇的な自殺」と和訳している。 しかしそれはあまり正確ではない。 TV star's tragic suicide linked to broken heart "linked to"には「末の」という意味はない。 正確に訳すなら、 「失恋と関連付けられたTVスターの悲劇的な自殺」となろう。
また【中宮崇】は、この記事が 「X氏」について日本が書けないことを書いていると評価している。 しかし、これも正確な論評ではない。 この記事はあくまで、ネットやゴシップ記事に載っている "rumors"や"innuendo"を第三者の視点で紹介しているに過ぎない。 だからこの記事は、 "the weekly conceding that nobody in the media is sure of what really happened." という一文で締めくくられている。