Cameraman arrested for groping gravure idol during shoot
A cameraman has been arrested for groping a gravure idol during a shoot.
The 61-year-old Nobuhiko Namai was arrested for touching the model on multiple occasions on a two-day shoot that he was handling for the production company where he works.
The alleged incident took place in October last year during a shoot in Chiba. It was not clear why it has taken so long for the incident to come to light or for police to act.
During the shoot, Namai is accused of touching the model’s lower body without consent. He was in charge of filming for an image video they were shooting for release on DVD. Such videos are, along with photo books, a core part of the gravure industry’s commercial output. Many are made on relatively low budgets with only a skeleton crew. When a young model is isolated with only a cameraman and possibly one or two others — more likely than not, all male — in a remote location, she is vulnerable to abuse.
The model is not named in media reports. She made a complaint to Chiba prefectural police, who opened an investigated into Namai, who lives in Nerima, Tokyo, and then arrested him on March 12.
He has denied the allegation. “I touched her for the purpose of filming and there was no coercion.”
At the time, the model thought she couldn’t say no in case the shoot was stopped and canceled, and then her DVD would not be released.
The vast majority of gravure idols earn very little money from their work and at the mercy of their management agencies and production companies that control the photo books and DVDs, and thus the future of their talent.
