Japanese inn owner secretly films female guest behind one-way mirror
On November 11, the Sakurai Police Station of the Nara Prefectural Police arrested a 46-year-old company executive from Uda City for secretly filming female guests in their underwear at an accommodation facility he owns.
Yoshinori Yoneda has been charged with violating both the Act on the Punishment of Filming Sexual Images and the Prefectural Ordinance on the Prevention of Nuisance Acts. He has admitted to the allegations.
According to police, the man is suspected of installing a camera at the inn he operates in Uda on October 16 at approximately 6:50 a.m. to film a female guest, a woman in her twenties from Osaka Prefecture.
The man drilled holes in the wall separating a staff room from a guest room, positioning a camera to record video inside the guest room. To prevent the camera from being seen from the guest-room side, he concealed it behind a one-way mirror. The incident came to light when the female guest was using the mirror to put on makeup, and then discovered the camera and reported it to the police.
It is not yet known if Yoneda had already set up the peeping Tom system and used it in the past to film other female guests.
Yoneda is the founder of a local craft beer called Okuyamato Beer, which has a taproom in Uda. He opened a brewery with guest accommodation, Tap to Bed, in 2021, and in 2025 ran a success crowdfunding campaign that raised over ¥2 million to open a second facility, Inn Fuse, a craft gin distillery with guest accommodation, renovated from an old house in Uda. Inn Fuse opened in 2026.
His business ventures have won him praise and press attention. The widespread reporting on his arrest this month, however, is likely to kill the small business empire he was building in Nara.
