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A Singaporean man has been arrested in Japan for allegedly committing indecent acts with a teenage boy at a hot spring, police said.
The 55-year-old suspect, who was not named, allegedly touched the minor inappropriately at an onsen inn in the central prefecture of Niigata, local media reported.
The man allegedly touched the minor’s genitals multiple times despite him resisting at a hot spring facility in Tagami town on 14 May, according to Niigata News.
Two days after the alleged incident, police arrested the suspect from the Niigata train station after a relative of the boy filed a complaint.
The man, who was holidaying in Japan, has denied the allegations against him. “I only put my hand on the left shoulder of the seated boy to get out of the bath, I did not commit any indecent act,” he reportedly told police.
Police said they have launched an investigation into the incident.
It was the latest incident of alleged sexual misconduct at Japan’s famed public baths to make headlines. In 2024, a former counsellor at the Singaporean embassy in Japan was convicted of filming a naked boy at a public bath in Tokyo. Sim Siong Chy was removed from his position after being fined 300,000 yen over the incident.
In another case, a former assemblywoman accused the mayor of a hot springs resort town of sexually assaulting her in his office in 2015.
Nobutada Kuroiwa, the mayor of Kusatsu, a famous hot springs resort north of Tokyo, denied the accusations as “100 per cent a lie and fabrication” and claimed they were motivated by a dispute over a hot springs policy.
In 2023, Shizuoka police dismantled a 30-year voyeurism ring that secretly filmed more than 10,000 women at hot springs across Japan, exposing significant lapses in facility oversight.
The operation, involving 17 arrests, shocked the public and led to demands for better security measures at hot springs like cameras in non-bathing areas and enhanced staff training.
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