Ex-Kanagawa Shimbun bureau chief accused of illicit filming, trespassing

KANAGAWA (TR) – Kanagawa Prefectural Police have arrested a former bureau chief of the Kanagawa Shimbun newspaper for trespassing and taking illicit films of women and trespassing, reports NHK (Feb. 14).

In November, Tetsuji Kumasaka, the 60-year-old former chief of the paper’s bureau in Yokosuka City, allegedly trespassed into the residence of a 60-year-old woman in Yokohama.

In July, he allegedly installed a micro camera in a women’s toilet in a restaurant in Yokosuka. Then, on two occasions last month, he allegedly took tosatsu, or voyeur, footage up the skirts of women inside a train carriage and railway station.

On January 18, Kumasaka submitted to voluntary questioning by police, who seized a hard disk from his residence containing tens of thousands of tosatsu images and videos of women.

“I have an interest in filming women’s underwear,” the suspect told the Yokosuka Police Station. “I started doing tosatsu photography four or five years ago. I’ve taken hundreds of images.”

On January 22, the Kanagawa Shimbun Co., which publishes the paper, dismissed the suspect. A representative of the company described the arrest as “regrettable” and offered an apology to the victims and its readers. “From now, we will endeavor to win back trust,” the representative said.