Manabu Shintani, general director of Bungei Shunju Co., Ltd., appeared in the video project ``Gather! Economic Forest'' on the YouTube channel ``ReHacQ'', which was released on the 2nd. The weekly magazine ``Weekly Bunshun,'' published by the company, revealed the circumstances surrounding Hitoshi Matsumoto 's assault on women Downtown.

When asked on the program whether he urged A-ko, the woman who complained of being victimized by Matsumoto, to consult the police, Shintani said, ``If you're the victim, why don't you go to the weekly magazine instead of going to the police?'' There are people who say, 'But frankly speaking, I don't think it would be possible to prosecute this as a criminal case.'' Explaining the reason for this, he said, ``There's only her testimony, and there's no objective evidence to back it up.So, if you ask me if I could file a complaint and have the police make a case, it would be impossible.''

He also revealed that he had spoken to a senior police officer, saying, ``I asked him, ``Can you turn what I wrote in this article into a case?'' and he said, ``100% impossible.It will never happen.'' '', that's what people end up saying.'' "When I tried to file a criminal case, I found that there was objective evidence, whether it was audio or photographs, to prove that I had really forced myself to do it, even though it was not consensual, and that I had been sexually assaulted. "We need evidence to support this, and it is basically very difficult to gather that evidence."

On the other hand, regarding the circumstances reported in Weekly Bunshun, he said, ``It's difficult to make a case, but from our perspective, if the police can't make a case, should she just go to sleep? , I don't think that will happen,'' he commented. ``We are not an investigative agency or anything like that, so just like the police, we don't have to meet all the conditions for an article to be published,'' he said, explaining why he decided to publish the article.