Photo/Illutration An outdoor hot spring bath known as “roten-buro” (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

SHIZUOKA--Prefectural police announced on Feb. 1 that a man led a group of Peeping Toms that secretly photographed and filmed at least 10,000 women at “roten-buro” outdoor hot spring baths across Japan over about 30 years.

Police arrested Karin Saito, 50, in December 2021 for violating a nuisance prevention ordinance issued by Hyogo Prefecture, and his case has been in court since.

Within about a year after the arrest, police rounded up 16 people in 11 prefectures, including national and local government employees and company executives.

Shizuoka police sent papers on Feb. 1 on three of the 16, including a 31-year-old doctor in Tokyo, to the Shizuoka District Public Prosecutors Office on suspicion of violating laws against child prostitution and child pornography.

These men got together to learn voyeurism techniques from Saito, who was known as “a charismatic voyeur,” investigators said.

According to police, Saito told investigators that he started committing voyeurism when he was 20 and has done it in at least 100 locations.

His voyeurism ring mainly targeted women soaking in open-air baths.

The men would hide in the mountains a few hundred meters away and secretly photograph or film them with a camera through a telephoto lens.

They also secretly photographed and filmed the same women in clothing so that they could compare their dressed photos with their naked images.

They created videos and edited them to add obscene subtitles, police said.

They also secretly drugged female acquaintances by slipping them sleeping pills, then committing lewd acts and filming them, police said.

They would later hold screening parties to share the videos among themselves.

Saito told investigators that he “met at least 100 people through voyeurism.”

Police are continuing to investigate and hope to round up more men involved in the group.

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