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The story
Koharu Kusumi (34), a former member of Morning Musume and now an actress, revealed on her Instagram Stories that she underwent surgery on her left eye for cataracts. Cataracts are widely associated with aging, but it’s not unusual for cases to appear at a young age due to factors like UV exposure, genetics, or atopic dermatitis. On 5ch, threads lit up with surprise at her developing the condition at 34, alongside a stream of stories about early-onset cases — “my classmate had surgery at 14,” “I had surgery myself in ninth grade because of genetics.” The discussion also turned to comparing how painful cataract surgery is versus retinal detachment surgery, and to a lively debate over whether 34 even counts as “young.”
August 29, 2026, 5:26 PM
Koharu Kusumi (34), former member of Morning Musume and now an actress, revealed on her Instagram Stories on the 29th that she had undergone surgery on her left eye for cataracts.
Kusumi posted a photo of her left eye covered with gauze, writing, “Actually, I ended up developing cataracts…”
Source: news.livedoor.com / Original article here
What people said
Probably congenital, I'd guess. I had surgery myself in ninth grade too — genetic in my case.
Thought this was about that drama Kumiko Goto was in…
She was 13 in that, wasn't she?
Even the Switch version is rated CERO D (17+), you know.
Isn't cataract surgery about swapping out the lens?
I'd take the injection any day.
Having your head, limbs and eyelids clamped down, then a rubber sheet draped over your whole face with just a hole cut for the eye, then getting an intraocular injection — that was the worst part for me.
Even under anesthesia there's still pressure pain, and you can see it happening. It's torture.
What are the symptoms?
Your eyeball turns cloudy white, and everything looks hazy overall.
It's said to be caused mainly by aging and UV exposure.
If you're severely nearsighted, you get visual field tests and go to the eye doctor regularly.
Maybe that's how it was caught.
It's like there's a thin sheet of gauze in front of your eyes — everything looks white.
If the clouding starts from the outer edge of the lens, then when your pupil shrinks (say, from bright light) you stop using the clouded part, so apparently it gets easier to see at that point.
With the atopic type, the clouding reportedly starts from the center, so when the pupil shrinks you end up only using the clouded area — meaning everything in front of you turns totally white.
If you're downing a ton of high-fructose corn syrup or acesulfame K,
you'll probably get cataracts even young.
I got it too, right before 40.
I barely eat sweets or drink juice, so that's probably not the cause in my case.
My eye doctor called it "gray hair for your eyes."
Once you hit a certain age it starts showing up a bit — and just like some people go gray early, some people get this early too.
Mainly UV exposure
They jab an anesthetic needle straight into your eyeball, suck out the contents, then laser-burn the retina on the back wall of the eye.
And since it's just local anesthesia, you're obviously still conscious the whole time.
After surgery, you have to stay face-down — literally with your face in a toilet-seat-shaped cushion — for two weeks straight until the eye naturally refills itself.
The other patients in my hospital room kept struggling to stay face-down the whole time, begging the nurses for a break — the second they shifted position even slightly, the nurses made them go right back. I remember thinking, "There's no way I could do that…"
Getting the stitches out hurt like absolute hell, I still remember it
I only had to stay face-down for 4 hours after my surgery, so I lucked out
Pretty much everyone gets cataracts once they're old enough.
(If you don't, consider yourself lucky.)
But once you're elderly, the cornea hardens, which makes both the surgery and the recovery much rougher.
If you have older relatives around you, it's worth getting their eyes checked early so you know what condition they're in.
What that comment doesn't explain is
whether getting checked and knowing your eye condition actually stops it from getting worse.
Kind of makes you wonder if it's just an ad for the doctors doing the checkups.
Eye doctors are like antlions, just waiting at the bottom of the pit for you to fall in.
What people actually want is to prevent eye problems in the first place, but they won't let you do prevention — and they won't do it for you either.
Her "Kirari-chan" character (a kids' anime/manga tie-in she starred in) was hugely popular with kids, but that popularity barely translated into support for the group, let alone for Koharu Kusumi herself.
Strange, isn't it.
Wonder what went wrong there.
"Koi Kana" and "Balalaika" (her solo singles) sold decently enough, but she never really took off within Morning Musume itself.
Didn't mesh well with producer Tsunku either.
Because the average age for people getting cataract surgery is in their 70s
A 30-year-old with no job is an "old" unemployed guy.
A 30-year-old employee is a "young" employee.
You get what I'm saying, right?
It depends what you're measuring the age against.
Even at 50, if someone dies people still say "they were still so young…"
That's not cataracts.
Cataracts make your whole field of vision look like frosted glass.
I googled "partial vision loss" based on what you said.
You should probably get to a hospital sooner rather than later.
Likely causes to consider:
Glaucoma:
A condition where the nerves inside the eye get damaged, gradually narrowing the field of vision. It often progresses with no noticeable symptoms and is the #1 cause of blindness in Japan.
Retinal detachment:
A condition where the light-sensing retina peels away. Vision can suddenly go missing in patches, or look like a black curtain has dropped over part of your view.
Brain conditions: Stroke or brain tumors can also cause part of the visual field to disappear.
If it's been going on for a year, it's probably glaucoma. With the other conditions, it would've gotten dramatically worse fast once you noticed.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Cataracts occur when the eye’s lens turns cloudy, and while aging is generally cited as the main cause, medical reports also document cases appearing in people’s teens or thirties due to UV exposure, genetics, atopic dermatitis, or congenital factors. Developing cataracts at 34 is unusual, but not an impossible age for it. In the thread, surprise at how young she was mixed with posters sharing their own or their family’s early-onset stories, turning the exchange into more of an information swap than an argument. Posters also noted that the hallmark symptom of cataracts is the entire field of vision looking hazy or white, whereas losing just part of your vision points more toward a different condition like glaucoma or retinal detachment — several warned against confusing the two. It was also mentioned that regular checkups don’t necessarily halt the progression itself, underscoring how important it is to correctly identify which type of symptom you’re actually dealing with.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “Former Morning Musume’s Koharu Kusumi Has Left-Eye Cataract Surgery — At 34, of All Ages… “Apparently It Can Happen Even When You’re Young”.”
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