Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on July 2011

TV presenter Mona Yamamoto, 35, has retired from showbiz. In a fax distributed to media on July 1, she wrote, “I apologize for the suddenness of this news, but as of June 30, I plan to retire from public life.” Yamamoto, who is daughter to a Norwegian father and a Japanese mother, has taken breaks before. In September 2006, she was accused of having an affair with married DPJ politician Goshi Hosono and was forced to step down from her position on TBS’s NEWS23 program, a job which she had only held for five days. She was fired again in 2008 from her position as an anchor for Fuji TV after news broke of her affair with Yomiuri Giants player Tomohiro Nioka, who was married at the time. Yamamoto married her husband, the president of a real estate investment company, in 2010.