A former Miyazaki City Council member who goes by the name “Super Crazy-kun” was sentenced Friday to 4½ years in prison for sexually assaulting a female acquaintance last September.
Makoto Nishimoto, 37, a former YouTuber and singer, had admitted to the crime during his trial at Miyazaki District Court. Prosecutors had asked for a prison sentence of seven years.
Prosecutors say Nishimoto sexually assaulted the woman in her 30s at a hotel in the city of Miyazaki, with the victim screaming to fend off the defendant. After escaping from the hotel room, she fell down a flight of stairs, resulting in an injury to her left hand that took three weeks to heal.
Nishimoto was elected to the city assembly in April 2023. After he was arrested in September, the meeting unanimously passed a resolution calling on him to resign, which he did in February.
He has also participated in several elections across the country, including the 2020 Tokyo governor’s race, where he finished in 10th place. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike won the election.
In 2021, he won a seat in the elections for the Toda Municipal Council in Saitama Prefecture, but the victory was subsequently declared invalid by the Supreme Court as he had not lived in the city for three months or more – a requirement laid down in the electoral law.
In a 2021 interview with the Tokyo Shimbun, Nishimoto said he entered the race to “increase my popularity.”
The newspaper also reported that Nishimoto’s father was a member of an organized crime group and that his mother left the family when he was one year old. While in high school, he joined a gang and was sent to a juvenile detention center three times.
