52 performers and crew from AV porn shoot arrested for indecent exposure

The Japanese AV industry is under a lot of pressure right now.

Just today we heard that top porn star Nozomi Aso has been arrested on drug charges.

Then there have been all the reports and criticisms about alleged coercion and exploitation in the industry, which even led to the arrest of porn industry staff and an official industry apology last month.

Now the arrests have led to new charges. This time, the president of production company CA, Yoshihide Murayama, is one of 52 people — 9 actresses 24 male performers, plus crew — accused of indecent exposure during a shoot a camping site in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture, on September 30th and October 1st, 2013. This is an unprecedented number of arrests for such a case, indicating that the police are possibly cracking down on the porn industry.

The woman who accused Murayama of coercion was one of the performers in the film, which apparently led to these secondary charges. The shoot involved talent agency Marks Japan, whose former president was among the arrests in June, and also the production company CA.

We haven’t seen the AV in question but we can easily imagine the genre: the kind of film where a handful of women are chased or enslaved by multiple men (often played by amateur performers). These types of outdoor shoots are risky and usually done at private resorts to avoid charges of indecent exposure.

Murayama denies the charges, claiming that the section of the camping site was sealed off to prevent ordinary members of the public seeing what they were doing. The male and female performers all admit the charges, so presumably will escape with light fines.