A handsome teacher who was arrested for “bringing a school uniform” to a female student at another school and was also reported for his “sexual proclivities” is “the other side of the story.

Demanded, “Bring me my uniform.”

At around 7:30 on the morning of April 2, a young man with a neat face emerged from the Kitazawa Police Station of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. He looked somewhat handsome as he walked with a slightly downcast look on his face, perhaps unable to stand the intense strobe light. He was a high school teacher, and many of his female students must have been his fans. How would they feel if they knew that he had been arrested for indecent behavior toward a high school girl of the same age as one of his students?

On April 1, the Kitazawa Police Department announced the arrest of Imaeda Kisuke, 29, a teacher at a Kanagawa prefectural high school, on charges of violating the prefectural Youth Protection and Nurturing Ordinance and of manufacturing child prostitution and child pornography.

Imaeda is suspected of taking a 17-year-old girl to his home and performing indecent acts on her and taking videos and photos of her with his smartphone between the night of December 1 and the early morning of December 2 last year.

The two met on SNS in November. The girl is a student at another school, and before they met, she told him in a message that she was a senior in high school. When Imaeda invited the girl to his house, he told her to ‘bring her school uniform. After leaving Imaeda’s house, the girl came to a police box in Setagaya Ward, asking for money for transportation.

Imaeda admitted to the investigation that he committed the indecent act to satisfy his desire, but was vague about whether he knew the girl was under 18 years of age.

In January, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) announced that Imaeda had received an award from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in the “2025 Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Outstanding Teachers’ Award. In October of last year, he also received an award from the Kanagawa Prefectural Board of Education as a “Prefectural Excellent Classroom Teacher,” which must have come as a great shock to school officials.

The Kanagawa Prefectural Board of Education stated, “We have not been able to confirm the details, but it is extremely regrettable that the teacher has been arrested. We will take strict action in light of the investigation. Imaeda was released on March 3, and the investigation continues on a voluntary basis.

SNS “Black Boxes” the Relationship between Teachers and Students

Incidents of sexual violence by teachers against minors continue to occur. According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 281 teachers were disciplined for sexual crimes and sexual violence in 2012. Of these, 63.3% were punished for acts committed against children (including those over 18 years of age), and 48% of the victims were children at the school where the teacher worked.

In recent years, schools have been nervous about the possibility of too much intimacy between teachers and students, but there have been an increasing number of cases of excessive relationships through social networking sites.

The teacher-student relationship is one of trust, so the hurdle to exchanging lines is low, but social networking relationships can easily turn from teacher-student to person-to-person, and the school has no control over the relationship. Because it is a “black box” that other teachers and parents cannot see, it is easy for mistakes to be made.

On March 27, another disciplinary action against two teachers was announced in Aichi Prefecture. One was a 24-year-old male teacher at an elementary school who contacted a female student at his school via SNS, met her outside the school, and hugged and kissed her. The other is a male teacher (30) at a high school who repeatedly committed indecent acts with a female student in his private car or at a hotel after communicating with her on SNS.

In response to the high incidence of sexual violence using SNS as a breeding ground, an expert panel of the Chiba Prefectural Board of Education issued a proposal in March to ban the use of SNS other than as a public tool for communication between teachers and students. An increasing number of schools are taking measures such as banning the use of smartphones in classrooms to avoid voyeurism by teachers.

However, the journalist is concerned that the strengthening of measures within schools may lead to an increase in the number of cases where students from other schools are targeted, as was the case in this case.

According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) data mentioned above, 11% of all teachers were punished for sexually assaulting students at other schools (including those over 18 years of age), which is a “minority” compared to the number of cases involving students at their own schools.

There have always been a certain number of teachers who target students from other schools. For example, a junior high school teacher (36) from Niigata Prefecture who was arrested last October went out of his way to travel to Tokyo to engage in daddy-daughter activities with junior high and high school students. This is probably because students at other schools are less likely to find out about his activities than students at his workplace, where he usually sees them and is watched by others.

If I met a student from another school on a social networking service, he or she would not know that I am a teacher. As mentioned earlier, social networking between individuals is less likely to be discovered. This is especially true if there is no regular relationship between the two parties.

It is not a matter of whether it is at your own school or another school. When a teacher engages in indecent acts with a minor, he or she betrays and grieves his or her students, guardians, colleagues, and others involved in the school. At that point, he is disqualified as an educator and as a human being.

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