Around the end of the 1990s, criminal psychiatrists began to note a shift in the types of sex-related crimes, away from those involving direct physical assaults to so-called "delusionary crimes," such as those involving surreptitious photography, underwear theft, stalking and so on. 

Recent statistics bear this out. Asahi Geino (Feb 26) reports that in 2025, the number of known violations of the Act on Punishment of Non-consensual Shooting of Sexual Acts/Images, enacted in 2023, reached 9,962 cases -- a year-on-year increase of 118% -- of which 5,296 individuals were indicted by prosecutors. 

"These figures," Asahi Geino's lead-in writes, "are likely just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to a shameless group of school teachers, other offenders have included police officers and politicians." 

"On January 28, a 34-year-old teacher at a school in Nagoya was arrested at a station in Atsuta Ward for applying an unspecified type of bodily fluid on the possession of a 15-year-old girl," a reporter from the police desk at a newspaper told the magazine. "From viewing the contents of his smartphone, the existence of a sneak-photo group was discovered." 

Subsequently the teacher faced additional charges for applying bodily fluids to children's musical instruments and on cafeteria dishes. 

"The second member of the group, a 37-year-old teacher at a public primary school in Yokohama, was arrested on June 6," the aforementioned reporter added. "He was accused of photographing girls' underwear at a facility in Kanagawa Prefecture the previous October, which he posted as a video on a group chat site. The previous summer he had also photographed and molested a young girls, and was also found in possession of sneak videos showing six girls changing their clothes." 

The apparent leader of the group, a 42-year-old teacher in Nagoya, was arrested, and as of November last year a total of seven members of the group had been arrested. 

"To prevent recurrences we have set up a project team consisting of influential individuals, PTA members, attorneys and others," said an exasperated Hideki Ishikawa, a member of the Nagoya Board of Education, adding, "Issues such as sexual violence are being studied and debated, and we'll make public our proposals for dealing with it within the 2025 academic year (which ends in March 2026)." 

Asahi Geino parades out similar offenses in Saitama and Fukuoka and Shizuoka Prefectures. 

Last June, aboard the subway line linking Fukuoka city to the airport, two young women were photographed while seated. The offender was found to be a 51-year-old superintendent in the Fukuoka Prefectural Police. His smartphone contained images of over 2,000 women, including 3,800 stills and about 100 videos. The prosecutor filed charges. 

In Shizuoka, a head of patrolmen in his 40s was charged with photographing women on the sly between August 2023 and May 2024.

Nobuo Taniguchi, who works in the general affairs section, went around to police departments in the prefecture. "We are implementing initiatives such as sharing information among staff, encouraging them to express their own opinions, and making them think about the problem as if it were their own, to make them more aware of their responsibilities," he was quoted as saying.

Equally if not more vexing, Japanese offenders are taking their lurid hobbies to other countries. 

"Last June, a 33-year-old employee of Iwate Prefecture, while on a visit to Taiwan as an individual, was arrested for filming up a girl's skirt while on an escalator," the aforementioned reporter remarked. "Even though released on bail, he was not permitted to exit the country. Before his trial in November it was found his smartphone contained upskirt videos of other women, and he was rearrested. He admitted to interrogators that he had taken videos on several occasions in the past. He has been summarily dismissed from his job in Japan." 

Last November a member of the Tokushima prefectural assembly, Hiroshi Furukawa, visited Tokyo and stayed in a business hotel in Akasaka, where he summoned a deriheru (outcall sex worker) to his room. The woman objected to his insisting on filming their activities, and police investigators found that Furukawa had made something of a hobby of recording his sex activities.

On the day of Furukawa's arrest, Komeito party chief secretary in Tokushima, Makoto Nishida, issued an apology. On December 1, Furukawa was expelled from the party, and he resigned from his seat four days later. 

Although Furukawa resigned on December 5, it turned out that he was still eligible to receive a year-end bonus of 2,026,012 yen. 

"We haven't been able to make contact with Furukawa," said Kazuya Kajiwara, a fellow Komeito member of the Tokushima legislature. "All we can say is that the whole thing is regrettable; but the bonus was paid according to the rules, and it's up to him to decide whether or not to keep the money."