On October 11, Shukan Bunshun (weekly magazine) reported that the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare’s Kanto Shinetsu Health and Welfare Bureau’s Drug Enforcement Department, known as Matri, was planning to conduct a full-scale investigation of Yonekura on suspicion of violating the Drug Enforcement Law. According to the same report, Matri conducted a raid on Yonekura’s apartment on August 20, and although a large number of TV and newspaper reporters gathered around Yonekura’s apartment in October, there has been no significant movement by the authorities as of yet. Yonekura also stopped updating her Instagram, so there was no indication of her movements. In recent years, Yonekura has been plagued by poor health. In 2019, she announced that she was suffering from “low CSF syndrome. Furthermore, in 2022, she was given a doctor’s stop due to “motor dysfunction caused by acute low back pain and sacroiliac joint disorder,” and had to leave the Broadway musical “CHICAGO,” which is her life’s work. At the time, Yonekura said,
I heard that he suffered from symptoms such as dizziness and general lethargy, and even simply walking was a struggle for him. She underwent surgery in the summer of 2023 and seemed to be on the road to recovery at that time, but I think it became difficult for her to work the way she does, which is to put all her heart and soul into her work. Yonekura herself said in an interview, “I can’t take on jobs that I can’t promise with certainty, so I think the shape of my ‘dream’ has narrowed a little” (from an interview with economist Yusuke Narita in the February 2025 issue of Bungeishunju). In addition to her physical condition, Yonekura has also undergone a “major change” in her working style in recent years: in March 2020, she left Oscar Promotion, to which she had belonged for 27 years, and in April of the following year, she restarted her career with her own agency, Desafio. The name of the office, “Desafio,” means “I challenge” in Spanish. Although she became independent in search of activities more in line with her own style, leaving a major agency apparently brought with it new worries. A source at the TV station mentioned above reveals, “I set up a private office and started to work for myself. He established a private office and was struggling with his new role as boss. There were times when things didn’t go as planned and he suddenly burst into tears, giving the impression that he was quite distressed at one point. Unlike the main character in “Doctor X: Surgeon Daimon Michiko,” which was her most successful role, the real Yonekura had many sensitive aspects. The line “I never fail” and the strong character give a strong impression of Yonekura, but in reality she is not so full of confidence. In fact, she sometimes overthinks things, and in the past, she once got shingles from stress. She seems to have been a little perplexed by the gap between the public image of her and her true self.