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Elite educator pinched over penchant for pubescent prostitutes
By Ryann Connell
August 30, 2004
Hirokazu Shizuku was one of Osaka's top education officials, responsible for
ensuring the prefecture's educators maintained the high moral and professional
standards expected of them.
Now, notes Asahi Geino (9/2), the 47-year-old elite educator is on remand
awaiting trial for breaking the law banning child pornography.
"He took a 15-year-old schoolgirl to a love hotel in Nishinomiya, Hyogo
Prefecture, where he performed indecent acts on her and then used his digital
camera to take nude photos of her," a source close to the police investigation
tells Asahi Geino. "A raid on his home unearthed over 10,000 pornographic
photos or videos of schoolgirls. That saw him arrested for production of child
pornography."
Changes to the child pornography law that came into effect in early July meant
that anybody who takes even a single indecent picture of an underage child can
be arrested for producing kiddy porn, a crime previously restricted to
large-scale producers.
"Shizuku has paid for about 150 prostitutes all across the country up until
now. He paid for an 18-year-old about three years ago and had been hooked on
younger girls ever since. In the past three years, he used the services of over
90 child prostitutes," a reporter for an Osaka-based newspaper tells Asahi
Geino.
Former pupils spoke of a "by-the-book" teacher who rarely strayed from
Education Ministry guidelines and was difficult to relate too.
Neighbors concur about Shizuku's distance.
"He was really rude all the time," says an associate near the teacher's home in
Mannaka, Osaka Prefecture. "You'd greet him and he'd just ignore you."
Osaka education officials were shocked by Shizuku's arrest.
"He never missed a day of work and was always plugging away at his job. He
never got into small talk and just chipped away at whatever he had to do," says
a spokesman from the Osaka Board of Education. "He never looked at weird sites
or made nuisance phone calls. I have never heard of any work-related problem
about him. When I heard about his arrest, my first thought was 'unbelievable.'"
While pen pushers in the hallowed halls of education administration may have
been surprised, those who knew Shizuku at a more intimate level hardly find the
news of his legal troubles to be earth-shattering.
"Before every game we played, he used to make us go out on the tennis courts
and practice. He used to watch us with this really lecherous look in his eyes.
It was almost as though he was eyeing us off deliberately," says a former
female pupil Shizuku took charge of while serving as a school tennis coach.
"Shizuku was really bad in his treatment of girls depending on their cuteness.
He didn't think twice about making a fool of a girl in front of everybody if
she was ugly or a bit plain. At least one girl stopped coming to school because
of the way he treated her. But then, if a girl was really cute, or she had big
boobs, he could be unbelievably kind and he'd let them do whatever he wanted in
his classes."
Despite his penchant for pubescent prostitutes, Shizuku insists he never let
his proclivities interfere with his profession.
"He swears," the Osaka hack tells Asahi Geino, "that he never laid a hand on
any of the girls he taught."
Copyright 1999-2004, Mainchi Daily. All rights reserved. Ryann
Connell is a Staff Writer and Senoir Desk Editor for the Mainchi Daily News. No
content may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission.
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