A 54-year-old Japanese man has been arrested on suspicion of murdering an ex-music idol.
Police in Fuchu arrested Akira Ishikawa on February 3 for killing a 24-year-old former idol called Sana Hirabayashi at a hotel in the city in the west of Tokyo by stabbing her neck.
Security camera footage captured the two entering the hotel at 2 a.m. on the morning of February 2. Ishikawa then left alone about four hours later. The hotel became concerned when Hirabayashi had still not emerged from the room by 1:30 a.m. on February 3 and couldn't be contacted. They called police, who found her in the ...
There are peeping Toms and then there are peeping Toms. And these guys didn't do things by half measures.
Shizuoka police have arrested a gang of peeping Toms who have been active for 30 years -- yes, three whole decades! The 13 voyeurs, including the 50-year-old leader, were apprehended in recent months, while a further three others connecting to the filming (including a doctor) have now been referred to the prosecutors.
Active since he was 20, the leader alone claims to have filmed over 10,000 people without consent at locations all around Japan (with the exception, for some reason, of ...
In mid-January, Japan is gripped by a short, sharp season: it's the time of the college entrance exam.
Up and down the country, high school students sat down last weekend for the exam that will determine which university they will go to from the spring.
But there's another factor involved in the exam: chikan. This, as regular readers will know, is the Japanese word for groping or molesting, especially if done on public transport like trains.
What's the connection between the exam season and train groping? Apparently, in the darker corners of social media and the internet where chikan folk ...
The head of the city assembly of Maizuru, a city in the north of Kyoto Prefecture, was fined for possession of child pornography. The fine was issued in 2019 but has only just come to light.
On January 6, Keiichi Tai announced his intention to resign as council speaker and assemblymember at a press conference held at Maizuru City Hall.
The 53-year-old, a member of Liberal Democratic Party and speaker for the municipal assembly in Maizuru, was fined ¥300,000 for violating the child pornography law. He had possessed four DVDs with content designated as child porn.
They were found at his ...
'Tis the season for giving, they say, but perhaps this 31-year-old Japanese man took that custom a little far -- and very much in the wrong direction.
Kyosuke Katsu, a company employee in Gamagori, Aichi, was arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage after he poured urine on the clothing of a fellow passenger on a train.
According to police and media reports, Katsu used a straw to squirt or pour urine onto the clothing of a 32-year-old woman who was sitting in front of him while the train was traveling from Okazaki Station to Gamagori Station at around 11 o'clock at night on December ...
The controversial new porn law has been used for the first time in Japan to arrest someone.
A 50-year-old executive at a video production firm, Takashi Sumiya, was arrested on suspicion of not giving contract documents to three performers (aged twenties to fifties) between August and October, according to multiple media reports on December 6.
The Shinagawa resident had been initially arrested and charged with filming "indecent acts" and uploading them uncensored to a video sharing website, the US-based FC2 Content Market. Sumiya has apparently earned around ¥82 million doing this in six ...
Back in May, we reported on the arrests of the head of Japanese secondhand book store chain Mandarake and four of its employees over the sale of sexually explicit old photo books, which the chain apparently sold online and at two of its stores.
Though "hair nude" photo books with full-frontal nudity have been produced and sold by mainstream publishers for decades, the books in question here were so-called "vinyl books," which are older and more obscure -- and less regulated. They constitute a kind of gray zone in terms of adult publications in Japan: hair nude books are "celebrity books" or ...
One of the biggest news stories last week, at least in our adult-flavored orbit, was the arrest of several people on allegations of organizing orgies in Tokyo.
Five men and women are accused of holding swinger parties where members of the public would pay to have sex with each other. The charges related to breaches of the prostitution law: organizers are accused of prostituting the female attendees by recruiting them for the parties.
It is reported that they made ¥650 million (the equivalent at current exchange rates of $4.6 million) in 10 years by holding over a dozen such events in a ...
While train groper (chikan) stories are two a penny, a somewhat more sensational one grabbed the headlines recently: someone accused of groping a passenger and caught at Shinjuku Station fled across the tracks, causing delays to four major JR lines for 50 minutes, including the Yamanote Line. Far from escaping, though, the man seriously injured himself and is currently hospitalized.
The incident took place on October 28 at around 11:15 p.m.
Well, it now turns out that the suspect was none other than a police officer!
It doesn't bode well for your police force, already under fire for how ...
Convenience stores are, well, convenient for a number of reasons: the food and drink available, paying your bills, using the copy machine, or popping to the bathroom.
Some conbini have a rule that you are meant to inform the staff on duty that you wish to use the toilet. Many people don't bother to ask permission but it seems one customer in Fukuoka took this rule a bit far.
The 28-year-old Atsushi Iwao was such a stickler for the rules, in fact, that he even specified exactly what he planned to do inside the public convenience. And it wasn't a number one or number two.
Indeed, as he ...
