Japanese pop starlet shaves head in act of contrition after tryst with a man
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TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese starlet who shaved her head and issued a tearful YouTube apology after spending the night with a man was scrambling on Friday to redeem the girl-next-door image of all-female group AKB48.
Pictures of the roughly shorn head of Minami Minegishi, 20, were emblazoned on national newspapers and Japan's Twitter scene was abuzz on Friday over news that the pop princess had broken the band's cardinal rule: no dating.
A sobbing Minegishi told fans she had decided to shave her head as an act of contrition after a popular weekly magazine published claims of a night of passion with a 19-year-old boy band member.
"I don't believe just doing this means I can be forgiven for what I did, but the first thing I thought was that I don't want to quit AKB48," she says in the video, which had been viewed on YouTube more than three million times.
