A dancer who choreographed for Namie Amuro, SMAP and DA PUMP and won a world dance championship has been arrested on suspicion of filming a schoolgirl's lower body with a small camera hidden in a dance studio toilet in Adachi Ward, Tokyo. Hiroyuki Sakuma, 65, has admitted the act, telling police he intended to satisfy his sexual desire, according to an account of the investigation.
Sakuma taught at the school where the camera was found. A girl attending the school discovered the device in the toilet and told a parent. The parent checked the next day and the camera was gone, but the same girl found one again later, and the parent took it and reported it to the school, whose operator contacted police.
The camera sat on a base shaped like a toilet-paper holder and was concealed with styrofoam and a hand towel. Sakuma first told investigators he had simply left a camera for filming dance in the toilet, then admitted placing it there to satisfy sexual desire, according to the account.
Videos of three girls found on phone
The arrest concerns an incident on August 27. Sakuma is suspected of filming the sexual parts of one girl with the camera and producing child pornography. Investigators also found videos of two other girls filmed on different days on his smartphone.
Footage on the camera showed Sakuma himself sitting on the toilet seat and adjusting the shooting angle. He is believed to have set the device before lessons and retrieved it afterward, and he told investigators he deleted videos stored on a computer.
Sakuma acknowledged knowing that many of the children in his lessons were elementary school students. He denied part of the allegation, saying, "There is no mistake about what I did, but the person I was targeting was an adult woman."
A celebrated name in street dance
Sakuma built a career at the top of Japanese street dance, working on choreography for some of the country's best-known pop acts and winning an international competition. That standing gave him routine access to children in a setting where parents leave them in an instructor's care.
Police are continuing to investigate the videos found on his phone and the circumstances at the school.