Japanese elementary school teacher arrested for “child porn” for filming students with phone camera

An elementary school teacher working at a municipal school in Kobe City has been arrested under the child prostitution and child pornography law. Kazuho Sano (23) is accused of filming children at his school with his smartphone in order to “make child porn.”

Sano was a temporary teacher at Kobe City Minato Elementary School. He was hired in April. He is accused of making videos with his phone camera featuring the naked bodies of children in a classroom at the Kobe school on June 25.

He is reported to admit the offense.

He allegedly filmed kids playing after school and made several videos. Another employee at the school became suspicious of Sano on July 3rd and checked the videos.

“I found the kids playing interesting and wanted to film them,” Sano apparently offered as his excuse.

Whether or not he deliberately wanted to film their naked bodies is unknown. The issue here is that he filmed the children’s “lower halves” and they were unclothed. Whether he filmed boys or girls is not reported.

It does raise questions: can you now film kids just playing in a park or public place? Will you be accused of ulterior motives if you do?

The child pornography law was controversially revised in 2014 to make possession illegal, though manga, anime and computer graphics were excluded from the wording for now.

So be careful what you film on your phone. A video of your own child taking a bath? Is that now classified as “kiddie porn” in Japan?