The former gravure idol and one-time political candidate Mari Takahashi has sadly died at the age of 27.
Her death was announced on September 9 and reported in the Japanese media today, though she died last week on September 4.
A graduate of the prestigious Keio University, Takahashi worked briefly as a gravure idol in around 2020 and also as a TV announcer and at an IT consultancy. She was also a finalist for the Miss Japan beauty contest.
She was briefly the official Democratic Party for the People candidate for a seat in a Tokyo constituency in the House of Representatives of Japan election held in April this year.
Her promising political career was nipped in the bud in February when a minor scandal broke out over allegations that she had worked as a hostess and received social welfare.
She was very quickly dropped by her party as their candidate, though Takahashi said in a tearful video that she had believed everything she had done was legal. She had even filed tax returns. (At the time, we were disgusted by the hypocrisy of her party, whose senior male members almost certainly receive lots of kickbacks and undeclared income, not to mention frequent hostess clubs themselves, and yet treated her like contaminated goods.)
She also apparently dated singer Noeru Kawashima from Travis Japan for six years, according to tabloid reports in March, but their relationship ended when she was dropped by her party the previous month.
Takahashi posted a series of old vacation pics to her Instagram in June but had largely disappeared from public view. She had deleted her YouTube channel and X/Twitter account, presumably due to the fallout from the online bashing she received in Tuesday.
No cause of death has been announced but it is thought that she took her own life. Questions will surely now be asked about her unfair treatment, especially by netizens, and the way in which her party did not support her.
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