A Japanese politician has pleaded guilty and been convicted of a number of disturbing sex crimes, including entering a women’s restroom to film non-consensual images while dressed as a woman.

Wataru Onishi, 42, had previously acted as the Committee Secretary for Japan’s Communist Party (JCP) in Chiba Prefecture. Onishi is known for having supported a controversial pro-LGBT bill which seeks to enshrine self-declared gender identity as a protected characteristic in Japan.

Onishi was initially arrested on January 12 in connection with a voyeurism incident that he professed to committing in the women’s public restroom at JR Nishi-Chiba station.

“The incident was discovered on November 21, 2022, when a call was made to authorities inside JR Chiba Station claiming that the backside of a woman had been photographed, and that the man who took the voyeuristic image had been detained. Police officers rushed to the scene. When I checked Onishi’s smartphone, I found a video [of a woman] that was secretly filmed. When I questioned him, he confessed to the crime,” stated an investigator with Chiba’s police force.

According to local news reports, Onishi had disguised himself as a woman when committing the crime in an apparent attempt to film his victims in the restroom without being detected.

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