Sho Tanaka (田中聖), the former KAT-TUN member who was released from prison in February 2026 after serving time for stimulant drug possession, has opened up about the circumstances that first pushed him toward drugs: crushing debt and years of nonstop, exhausting work.
Tanaka, 40, appeared on “Takariko Channel,” a YouTube show hosted by actor Noboru Kochi and gambling-addiction advocate Noriko Tanaka, where he spoke candidly about his history with substances. Asked what first lowered his guard, he said that working in the music industry, where drug use among some peers wasn’t unheard of, gradually eroded his own sense of where the line was. He noted that during his years in KAT-TUN he had zero tolerance for it, saying he would confront and physically push away anyone around him who used drugs, telling them to stay away from him.
That changed after Tanaka left the former Johnny’s agency in 2013, when his contract was terminated over what the agency called repeated rule violations. He joined a new agency where, he said, he was paid only about 40,000 to 50,000 yen a month while enduring severe workplace harassment. When he eventually left that agency, he found himself saddled with a debt reaching into the tens of millions of yen.
To pay it off, Tanaka said he worked without a single day off for roughly three years, putting in about 20 hours a day and constantly racing against deadlines. It was in that state, he said, that he began using drugs “in order to work.” Even while using, he recalled recognizing how wrong it was, thinking he had become “the kind of person I hated most,” but telling himself he needed it to finish his work on time, that he could stop anytime, and that this would be the last time. That cycle, he said, pulled him into a dependency he described as carrying an element of self-harm.
Tanaka’s drug history includes a 2017 arrest for marijuana possession, after which he resumed music activities later that year, and a second arrest in February 2022 for stimulant drug possession. He was sentenced in December 2023 to two years and eight months in prison, a term that was finalized, and was released in February 2026.
Who is Sho Tanaka?
Sho Tanaka is a Japanese musician and former member of KAT-TUN, one of the best-known boy bands produced by Japan’s former Johnny’s talent agency (now operating as Starto Entertainment), famous for hits like “Real Face” and for being one of the agency’s flagship idol groups in the 2000s. Tanaka’s contract with the agency was terminated in 2013. He went on to front the rock band INKT starting in 2014, continuing to perform even after a 2017 marijuana arrest, before a second, more serious drug arrest in 2022 led to his conviction and imprisonment.
Author’s Comment
Let’s be honest: "20 hours a day for three years to dig out of debt" isn’t really a drug story, it’s a labor story that happened to end in drugs. I’ve watched this exact pattern play out in showbiz for decades — an idol gets cut loose from the big agency, lands somewhere with no safety net, and suddenly "hustle culture" isn’t a hashtag, it’s survival. The real story here isn’t that he was weak, it’s that an industry built on disposable young men rarely asks what happens to them once the spotlight moves on. And I’ll give him this: standing in front of a camera and admitting "I became the person I hated most" takes more guts than most people in this business ever show. Here’s hoping the next chapter of his story is the boring kind — steady work, actual days off, no deadlines chasing him into a corner.
