UPSKIRT

Upskirt (transliterated as appu-sukaato) is the photographing of unsuspecting women by pointing a camera up the skirt to view their underwear. Escalators, stairs, crowded trains and stores are some of the favorite haunts of the upskirt photographer who typically uses miniature cameras concealed in shoes or bags. The manager of a store selling miniature cameras in Tokyo says most customers are "men in their 20s and 30s, salarymen types." However, since the boom in cell phones incorporating cameras, hardly a week goes by without newspaper reports of arrests of policemen, schoolteachers, university professors, civil servants, and other "respectable" members of society for the crime of upskirt photography. In fact, such was the an explosion of "upskirt" crimes immediately after the launch of the camera-equipped phones that legislation was passed making it mandatory for such phones to make a loud camera-shutter sound in an attempt to make such photography less surreptitious. There are several theories for the Japanese male's obsession with women's panties, but the most likely explanation is that the underwear acts as a substitute for women's genitals. Genitalia are considered obscene in Japanese law, so legal "erotic" photography features lots of panty shots.