Japanese director Sion Sono has been accused by two women of sexually assaulting and offering roles in his films in exchange for sex.
A longtime international festival favourite, director of Nicolas Cage and Nick Cassavetes in last year’s Prisoners of the Ghostland, Sono, 60, has not yet responded to allegations in weekly magazine Shukan Josei.
An executive at a Japanese film distribution company told the magazine, “Even now there is one director who will say without hesitation, ‘If you screw me, I’ll give you a job.’ His films are celebrated and many actresses want to appear in them. He uses that to attack women like it’s nothing. That director is Sion Sono.”
These allegations follow those made by several women against director Hideo Sakaki and his girlfriend Houka Kinoshita over the past month. Japan may be on the verge of a delayed #MeToo movement.
An unnamed actress says Sono told her that many women have had sex with him for many years because they wanted to work in his films and that thanks to him they do well in the industry, according to Shukan Josei.
She went on to tell how, after Sono offered her a role in one of his films, he tried to force her to have sex with him. When she refused, the director called another woman who had previously worked with him, and they continued to engage in sexual acts in front of her. While she was in shock, an assistant director who was present led her outside. Assuming he was trying to help her, she followed him outside, but the assistant director then tried to take her to a love hotel.
Another actress reported that after Sono forced her to have sex with job offers, he told her, “I want to fuck you while you’re on the phone with your boyfriend.” When she told him she didn’t have a boyfriend, he should said, “Well, get one, I like that kind of thing.”
2001’s Sono’s Suicide Club attracted some attention at the international festivals, but it was Love Exposure (2008) that proved to be his breakthrough, winning the FIPRESCI award in Berlin.
With his idiosyncratic style, the lively portrayal of violence and eroticism and his provocative imagery, the director has now acquired cult status.
Sono is married to Megumi Kagurazaka, a former pin-up model who has appeared in several of his films. His first child was born in 2019, two days before he was hospitalized for a heart attack, delaying production of Prisoners of the Ghostland.