A station concourse in the morning. Amid the crowd climbing the escalator, a shout of “stop” and a station attendant’s restraint ring out. A man crouched at the floor has his smartphone seized, and police officers arrive. The breaking-news feed reads “arrested in the act for voyeuristic photography.” This is one cross-section of a new public-order regime in present-day Japan, in which tousatsu is at once a recurrent crime and one swiftly caught and punished.

Tousatsu (voyeuristic photography) is the act of photographing or recording, against the will of the person filmed, the area under their clothing, a sexual state of the body, or the course of a sexual act. The Act on Punishment of Photographing Sexual Body Parts (commonly the “photographing offence”), in force from 13 July 2023, defined it clearly as an independent criminal offence. The act is plainly a sexual crime; this entry describes its legal treatment and social position, not techniques or methods, and treats it within the framework of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA).

Background to the legislation

Until the 2023 reform, no uniform nationwide law punished voyeuristic photography directly, and it was handled by combining several statutes according to the form of the act.

The first basis was the Minor Offences Act (Article 1, item 23), punishing with detention or a petty fine anyone who “peeped into the residence, bath, changing room, toilet or other place where people are normally undressed.” This was an old 1948 provision with light penalties (detention of one to under thirty days, or a petty fine under 10,000 yen), starkly disproportionate to the gravity of modern voyeurism harm.

The second basis was the anti-nuisance ordinances of each prefecture, forbidding lewd conduct and photographing at stations, on trains and in public facilities, with penalties typically around “up to six months’ imprisonment or a fine up to 500,000 yen.” But the scope varied by prefecture, producing the inconsistency that the same act might be punishable in Tokyo and not in Osaka.

The third basis was peripheral law applied as a stopgap: the Child Pornography Act where the subject was a child, trespass where the offender entered a residence, and public-indecency and obscene-material distribution offences where images were circulated online. Against the inconsistency and inadequacy of these provisions, and the explosive rise in cases with the spread of smartphones (police statistics show over 5,000 cases a year through the late 2010s), the Act on Punishment of Photographing Sexual Body Parts was passed in June 2023 and enforced from 13 July to strengthen the response to sexual crime fundamentally.

Elements of the photographing offence

The offence targets “photographing a target sexual body part etc. covertly without a legitimate reason” (Article 2, paragraph 1). “Target sexual body parts etc.” covers sexual parts such as the genitals, anus, chest and buttocks, underwear being worn (such as pants and the brassiere), and the body during a sexual act or self-stimulation.

The statutory penalty is up to three years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to three million yen, far heavier than under the Minor Offences Act or anti-nuisance ordinances. Where the photographed image is transmitted or circulated to an unspecified number of people (the image-provision offence), the sentence rises to up to five years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to five million yen. Photographing by feigning the subject’s consent, or by using drugs or alcohol to render the subject unconscious, likewise carries a heavy sentence.

Erasure of seized electromagnetic records

Another key mechanism of the photographing-offence law is the order to erase the electromagnetic records of seized photographic data. Under the previous system, police had no clear basis to dispose of seized voyeurism data, and there were even cases in which data was returned after a decision not to prosecute. To protect the victim’s personal interests, the law established a procedure for the court to order the certain erasure of seized image data and its copies.

Social treatment of the act

Voyeuristic photography tramples the personal dignity of the victim and is plainly criminal under current law. Since the photographing-offence law took effect, the in-the-act apprehension system linking station staff, police and railway operators has been strengthened, and combined with station security-camera networks, the immediate identification and arrest of offenders has greatly advanced. Voyeurism in public spaces such as station concourses, escalators and trains amplifies the victim’s anxiety and psychological burden greatly, and the degree of social condemnation is high. Through sexual-crime victim support centres and prefectural police consultation desks, victims can receive support including criminal complaint, civil damages claims and counselling.

Subcultural context and ethical line

In AV and adult manga a genre billed as “voyeurism-themed” exists, but these are fictional works filmed entirely with the performers’ consent, not footage of real voyeurism victims. Actual voyeurism footage is plainly illegal, and its circulation or viewing is itself subject to the image-provision and possession offences. Even when consuming “voyeurism-themed” fiction, an ethical line is required on the viewer’s side that never moves toward affirming or imitating real voyeurism. Since the law took effect the industry has grown cautious about the “voyeurism” label, shifting toward titles that make the fictionality explicit, such as “unauthorized-style” or “surveillance-camera-style.”

Related terms

• Minor Offences Act
• Anti-nuisance ordinance sexual offences
• Revenge porn
• Child Pornography Act
• Obscene-material distribution offence