A YouTuber with about 1.03 million subscribers was arrested in October 2026 on suspicion of defamation over private-arrest videos, as psychiatrists warn that vigilante clips are breeding copycats who patrol stations hunting voyeurs.
Kyoto prefectural police arrested the man over a video posted in June last year. It carried on-screen text that made a former real estate company executive in Kyoto look like a fraudster. The man took his own life the month after it went up.
The videos belong to the private-arrest genre, in which posters confront people suspected of crimes and hand them to police. The clips draw views. They also produce people hooked on private arrests whether or not a camera is running.
Some repeatedly hunt and restrain voyeurs at stations and on trains in their own time. Psychiatrist Yuki Yamashita, who has long helped offenders return to society, said such people come to him for advice about being caught up in private punishment.
Four needs, one act
Yamashita said people act to satisfy four feelings. They seek safety and stability, change and challenge, belonging and connection, and respect and recognition. These usually conflict, making them hard to satisfy at once, he said.
When one activity meets two or more of them, the risk of dependence rises sharply. Catching a voyeur does exactly that, he said.
“You wear justice as a cover, enjoy the thrill of the challenge, are praised by those around you, and the target does not fight back out of guilt, so you get safety too.”Yuki Yamashita, psychiatrist
At first the motive is punishing wrongdoers. Gradually the act cannot happen without a wrongdoer, and the purpose and the means swap places, he said.
A first catch that hooks
One patient, a man in his 30s in Tokyo identified only as A, watched a voyeur-hunting YouTube channel called Gattsu ch. One day at Ikebukuro Station he came across a voyeur in the act.
The man had opened only the top of a black bag and was photographing openly with a camera hidden inside. A approached him imitating what he had seen on video and made the arrest with little trouble.
Yamashita divides dependence into substances, such as alcohol and tobacco, and behaviors, such as shoplifting and groping. Substance dependence deepens gradually. Behavioral dependence can pull someone in with a single stroke of beginner's luck, he said.
Few people see any value in catching voyeurs. Anyone can become attached to that value given a trigger, he said.
“If you watch someone do it well and think you could too, you inevitably want to try. If it works, the act takes on a special value for you.”Yuki Yamashita, psychiatrist
He said he often meets store detectives hired to stop shoplifters who end up stealing themselves. Plenty of people take up an act after seeing someone else succeed at it.