Japan "sweetheart" actress sentenced for drug use
TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese singer-actress famous in Asia for her sweet, girl-next-door image was given a suspended jail sentence on Monday for using illegal stimulants in the latest celebrity drugs case in Japan.
The court handed down an 18-month jail term, suspended for three years, to 38-year-old Noriko Sakai, who shot to fame in the late 1980s with pop songs and later turned to acting.
Prosecutors had demanded 18 months in prison.
Sakai's drug scandal has made headlines in Japan and in parts of Asia where she has many fans, since she and her husband, Yuichi Takaso, were arrested in August for possessing and using drugs.
Sakai was held in detention for nearly 40 days after her arrest before being released on 5 million yen ($55,500) bail.
Her trial has attracted intense media and public attention in a country with a very strict attitude toward drug use that stems, in part, from a spike in amphetamine abuse after World War Two, when the drug was sold without prescription.
More than 3,000 people queued up in a park near the courtroom for one of the 21 gallery tickets to see the verdict, while hundreds of others jostled with the media to get a glimpse of the actress as she was entering and leaving the building.
Sakai's case follows the arrest of other high-profile personalities on substance abuse charges, including a Russian sumo wrestler who was later expelled from the sport.
While legalizing marijuana or using it for medical purposes has been debated and approved in some western countries, such ideas haven't caught on in Japan.
In one of the country's most infamous busts, Beatle Paul McCartney spent nine days in a Tokyo jail in the 1980s after arriving at the airport with a bag of marijuana in his suitcase.
(Editing by Miral Fahmy)
