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Senior Japanese Football Association (JFA) official, Masanaga Kageyama, has received an 18-month suspended prison sentence in France after being caught viewing images of child sexual abuse during a flight, French authorities confirmed on Tuesday.
The JFA’s technical director, was arrested last week during a stopover at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport while en route to Chile, reportedly for the Under-20 World Cup. According to Le Parisien, flight attendants on an Air France flight alerted authorities after spotting him looking at explicit material involving minors on his laptop in the business class cabin.
“The facts were discovered by the plane’s flight crew, who raised the alarm after noticing that the convicted man was viewing child pornography images on the plane,” the prosecutor’s office in Bobigny, near Paris, told AFP.
The 58-year-old was convicted on Monday of importing, possessing, recording, or saving pornographic images of a minor under 15. Alongside the suspended jail term, Kageyama was fined €5,000 (£4,200) and banned from working with minors or returning to France for the next ten years. He will also be added to the country’s national sex offenders’ register.
During the court hearing, Kageyama admitted to viewing the images but claimed he believed they were AI-generated and did not realise it was illegal in France. He reportedly expressed shame over his actions.
The JFA confirmed that Kageyama would be dismissed immediately.
Kageyama, a former J-League player and coach, had been responsible for developing Japan’s football teams, training coaches, and overseeing youth player development. He previously managed Japan’s under-18, under-19, and under-20 national teams.
