In early July, the education ministry called an emergency meeting with local school superintendents asking them “to strictly enforce teacher discipline and eradicate sexual violence against students.” The meeting was called in the wake of media reports that two public elementary school teachers, one from Nagoya and the other from Yokohama, had been arrested for allegedly secretly recording female students and sharing the videos and images with other teachers via a group chat. Later, teachers in Hiroshima and Fukuoka were also arrested for the same offense.

It’s believed that these individuals and others belong to a group of about ten male teachers who share upskirt photos of elementary school girls and videos of girls with emphasis on their undergarments. On June 30, the Nagoya municipal education committee revealed that a 34-year-old teacher who worked at an elementary school in the city had been arrested for multiple counts of “vandalism” after he “deposited” a bodily fluid on the backpack of a 15-year-old girl in Nagoya Station. It should be noted that it wasn’t the first time this teacher had been accused of such behavior. He’d already been suspected of doing the same thing twice before, with a musical instrument and then a school lunch bowl being the targets of his bizarre folly. He is also believed to be a member of the aforementioned teachers group. 

If it sounds odd that the teacher may have gotten away with his act twice before being arrested, prior to the meeting on July 10, Education Minister Toshiko Abe called on any teachers in Japan who were carrying out such offenses to come forward and identify themselves. Obviously, it took time for the ministry to develop a sense of crisis over the matter. In any case, media have indicated that whatever the police and prosecutors do, the ministry will definitely punish the teacher this time. 

It’s not as if the ministry had been usaware of the problem. A recent report for the magazine Toyo Keizai explains that posters in public elementary schools warn students about being touched inappropriately, observed clandestinely, and forced to be alone with someone. When such things occur, the student is urged to immediately report the incident to an adult. In addition, all public schools have rules for teachers that strictly prohibit touching students in any way, sending private messages or emails to students, and being alone with them under any circumstances. The fact that the aforementioned posters are widespread in all public schools in Japan would seem to indicate that the behavior they warn against is also widespread, and Toyo Keizai reports that, in fact, such incidents are on the rise. In 2023, 157 elementary school teachers were disciplined for indecent behavior, or 38 more than were disciplined in 2022.

On August 25, the web news program Democracy Times presented a report on indecent teacher behavior by Tansa, Japan’s only independent investigative journalism organization. Tansa has been studying the problem for a number of years and worked with NHK to research the matter in other countries. It seems that Tansa has known about the chat group related to the Nagoya arrests for some time, but only recently has the group’s activities been targeted by the police and the education ministry. In the past, however, students were as often blamed for poor judgment as the teachers were for illicit behavior, and while there have been isolated arrests in the past for prohibited photography and filming of minors, the police have never probed the problem in depth. One reason seems to be that there is money involved. These teachers and others with a fondness for such images readily buy and trade them online, usually through an app called Album Collection, which was available through the Apple App Store and Google Play. Tansa reports that Apple made several hundred million yen a year in sales of the Album Collection app, which seems to be used mainly for porn. 

Apple has since removed Album Collection from the App Store after media like Tansa asked them about its use as a means to distribute child pornography, but removing the app does nothing to stop the spread of images that are already out there. Tansa says the teachers who have been caught are only the tip of the iceberg, and that the authorities seem to be willfully ignoring the larger picture.

Of course, the vast majority of elementary school teachers in Japan do not share improper images of their students, but the fact that one group of teachers formed for the express purpose of doing so indicates that more work must be done to root out such individuals, who seem to have chosen their line of work for reasons that have nothing to do with pedagogy and everything to do with pedophilia.