Japan: Man arrested for taking "normal" picture of woman in train ....

[NY_Dan]

Double Image,

These photos were part of an experiment regarding the power of suggestion. My hypothesis was that if I carried a sign in the NYC subway with the words, "If you're happy and you know it, take off your clothes!, " that at least 25 percent would be suggestible and do it. As you can see (because photos do not lie), my hypothesis proved correct. Later today I will conduct a second power of suggestion experiment by posting a thread on RFF with a photo of my new sign: "If you love your mother give me your Leica!" I'm clearing a few shelves to make room for the Leicas sure to arrive in next week's mail. Cheers!

 

[noisycheese]

I shot these on the NYC trains! Booyah! USA! USA! USA!

It turns out that pants are highly overrated... 😀

 

[AZPhotog]

It really would be courteous to ask someone if you have <obviously to them> singled them out for a photo. . . . just a thought . . .
If she felt threatened, the act of asking may have turned this into a non-issue. And if she said no, at least she knows there was up-front consideration for her feelings.
And perhaps she may have even been victimized somehow in the past and is sensitive to attention. In particular, what JSROCKIT posted above.
On the other side, I have seen at least one posting under TRAVEL where some of the Japanese people were actually very eager to pose for tourists with cameras . . . it boils down to the particular person; everyone is unique.

 

[Samouraï]

This is absurd.

 

[dogbunny]

I'm still shooting away without any problems. I think this is a case ofーlike most things in Japanーthere is a time and a place for everything. Also, for good or ill, the gaijin card works wonders for being forgiven.

 

[Paul Jenkin]

Japanese tourists certainly don't practice whet their government preaches when overseas. I work in London (near Tower Bridge) and the number of Japanese tourists who wander around, laden with Nikon and canon gear, taking photos of everyone and everything, has to be seen to be believed. Maybe it's because they've been let off the leash for a couple of weeks....?

 

[jonmanjiro]

Interesting that this thread should pop up again now. Last weekend, I joined a photo walk in Tokyo held by the photography circle of my previous workplace (Nikon Systems), and I actually asked the photographers who attended about this case. Eight out of eight people had neither heard of this case nor knew anything about the anti nuisance ordinance in question, and they were all shocked when I explained the story and how the anti nuisance ordinance could be applied. They said they'd all taken similar photos to the guy who was arrested. My guess is that most Japanese people don't know about this case or the anti nuisance ordinance in question.

And that leads me to suspect that there is more to the story than just some guy just taking some snaps of a girl on a train and the girl not liking it. The guy must have creeped the girl out somehow, then she complained to station staff or police, and then they applied the anti nuisance ordinance because it was the closest fit/easiest to apply. Of course that's just my guess, but almost no one knows about the ordinance in the first place, and there are so few cases of the ordinance actually being applied, that there has to be something to the story we aren't being told.

 

[Yoh]

i love my 300mm lens,...