Masanaga Kawayama was on a flight to Chile for the Under-20 World Cup when the crew issued the alarm.
Released on October 7, 2025
Officials from the Japan Senior Football Association were sentenced to a suspended sentence of 18 months in France for “viewing child pornographic images” on plane trips.
According to the Le Parisien newspaper, Masanaga Kageyama, the association’s technical director, was arrested last week on a stopover at Paris’ Charles Degaard airport on his way to Chile.
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He is believed to be heading to Chile for the Under-20 World Cup.
“The facts were discovered by the plane’s flight crew. The plane issued an alarm after realising that the convicted man was viewing images of child pornography on the plane,” the court prosecutor’s office in Bobigny, north of Paris, said Tuesday.
The court on Monday sentenced a 18-month sentence at age 58 and a fine of 5,000 euros ($5,830) and imported, owned, recorded or preserved pornographic images of minors under the age of 15.
His ruling includes a ban on working with minors for 10 years and a ban on returning to France during that period.
Kageyama will also be added to the French National Sex Offenders register.
Le Parisien reported that flight attendants caught him watching images on his laptop in a business class cabin on an Air France flight.
He claimed to be an artist, and claimed that the photographs were generated by artificial intelligence.
During his appearance in court, Kageyama admitted to looking at the images and said he had not realized it was illegal in France.
He was in police custody over the weekend until he appeared in court on Monday. He was released after the hearing.
Kageyama is responsible for implementing measures to strengthen Japan’s soccer teams, including the national team, educates coaches and develops youth players.
He is a professional J-League football player and has also coached several J-League clubs. He also managed teams for under 20, under 19 and under 18 in Japan.
