The Big Apple’s unofficial “mayor of Little Tokyo” has been accused in a new $95 million lawsuit of sexually assaulting an executive at his company following a night on the town with other employees, The Post has learned.
Nozomi Horikoshi, the vice president of operations at T.I.C. Restaurant Group, claims her boss Shuji Bon Yagi had sex with her while she was passed out and couldn’t consent after going out drinking with other co-workers on Dec. 10, according to her Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed Tuesday.
“I woke up at his apartment and I wasn’t wearing anything,” the 51-year-old married mom told The Post. “I realized I was naked from the waist down … that was so embarrassing.”
“I was like what happened? I have to go home. I knew that something happened already,” she continued. “There was a feeling of shame.”
Yagi, 73, owns around a dozen restaurants in Manhattan — many of them clustered in an area of the East Village on Ninth and Tenth Streets dubbed Japantown or “Little Tokyo” — and has been called the “mayor” of the neighborhood in The New York Times and other publications.
Horikoshi, who has worked for the well-known restaurateur for close to a decade, said he invited himself to celebrate the birthday of another female colleague “knowing that his wife was in Japan throughout the weekend,” her filing claims.
Some time after 2 a.m., Horikoshi claims her boss ushered her into a cab and started grabbing, touching and trying to kiss her. Stephen YangAfter the birthday girl left to meet up with others, Yagi, Horikoshi and another woman co-worker went to a bar and then a karaoke spot for more drinks, the suit says.
That colleague, “who was quite drunk,” went home, and Horikoshi said she met up with the woman celebrating her birthday again before Yagi whisked her off to another bar, the court papers allege.
Some time after 2 a.m., Horikoshi claims her boss ushered her into a cab and started grabbing, touching and trying to kiss her while she was very inebriated, the suit alleges.
Yagi, 73, owns around a dozen restaurants in Manhattan — many of them clustered in an area of the East Village on Ninth and Tenth Streets. Facebook/Fred KatayamaHorikoshi “tried to push Yagi off her and told him to stop, but due to her level of intoxication, plaintiff eventually lost consciousness inside the taxi,” the filing alleges.
Instead of taking her home, Yagi allegedly took her straight to his West 58th Street apartment, the suit claims, citing GPS information from Horikoshi’s cell phone.
Horikoshi eventually woke up naked from the waist down with her boss laying on top of her, the suit alleges.
Horikoshi “tried to push Yagi off her and told him to stop, but due to her level of intoxication, plaintiff eventually lost consciousness inside the taxi,” the filing alleges. Stephen YangShe took a cab home but felt she had “been penetrated” and had a bruise on the back of her head, the court documents allege.
When Horikoshi attempted to confront Yagi later that day, he “abruptly ended their phone conversation,” the suit claims.
Then in January, the filing alleges Horikoshi recorded Yagi as she again confronted him about what happened that night.
Yagi told her that he had been interested in her from the first time he met her — and that he perceived her coming with him to the bar as an indication that she wanted him too, Horikoshi and the suit claim.
“I have been working there for nine years and the more I talk to him, I start feeling lost,” Horikoshi said of the aftermath of the conversation. “I trusted him. I totally lost the trust. I felt deceived … I felt like he was looking down on me, like I was invisible.”
Yagi said he believed there was “mutual sexual consent, and that if plaintiff could not consent he had made a mistake,” the filing alleges.
He also allegedly told the Queens mom that “some people” would find his “behavior” toward her “acceptable due his role as [her] boss,” the suit claims.
Horikoshi said that her husband also worked in the company and that the alleged incident caused “chaos” at home.
She continued to work there but said she had been marginalized at the office and that Yagi no longer speaks to her, according to her suit.
“I want to move forward so he can understand my feeling that he hurt me and my family too,” she said.
She is suing Yagi and his company TIC Akean for $95 million.
An attorney for Yagi vehemently denied the allegations, saying the lawsuit was a cash grab.
“The undisputed facts are that Nozomi got black out drunk, fell on a sidewalk and smashed her head, and texted a friend the next day that she had no recollection of even being in Yagi’s apartment,” Louis Pechman said in a statement. “Now she wants 300 million dollars, claiming that a man who had his prostrate removed has raped her. There was never any sexual assault. Full stop.”
Horikoshi’s attorney Christoper Brennan said his client’s suit was about “power and accountability” for Yagi, a high-profile businessman who has been credited for influencing Japanese cuisine in New York.
“Mr. Bon Yagi assumed that because he was Ms. Horikoshi’s boss and a prominent local business person, he was permitted to betray Ms. Horikoshi’s trust and violate her sexually, as described in the complaint filed today,” Brennan said in a statement. “Mr. Yagi underestimated Ms. Horikoshi’s strength of character and her willingness to take the steps necessary to hold Mr. Bon Yagi accountable for his actions.”







