Board of education suspends Japanese teacher who stockpiled 750 pairs of panties at school

High school educator might sound like a pantie thief, but it turns out he was actually a wannabe pantie merchant.

Though Japan takes education seriously, it’s not like schools exist just to cram pedantic trivia into young minds. As a matter of fact, some Japanese high schools operate under the expressed goal of preparing students with practical knowledge that will help prepare them for a career in a specific field, such as Kurume Commercial High School, a public school in Fukuoka Prefecture on the southwestern island of Kyushu.

As its name implies, Kurume Commercial High School puts a special emphasis on business management, and so ordinarily most people would say it’d be acceptable, even admirable, for a member of its faculty to engage in a little entrepreneurship. However, one teacher at the public school landed himself in trouble by trying to turn the students into customers in his pantie resale business.

The 50-year-old male teacher’s (whose name has not been mentioned in official reports) undoing began last July, when another teacher discovered a stockpile of some 750 pairs of women’s panties, stored in 10 plastic shopping bags, inside a cleaning supplies cabinet in a room used for club activities at the school. Since the 50-year-old teacher was the advisor assigned to that particular club, administrators questioned him about it, and he revealed that he’d been stashing lingerie at the school since the summer of 2016.

While this may sound like a clear-cut case of a pervy educator swiping female students’ panties while they’re at swim class, the teacher insists that he purchased the panties from “a specialized seller” in July 2016, for the sum of 10,800 yen (US$102). He then moved them to the school a month later, with the intent of reselling them during Kurume Commercial High’s culture festival in October, when the students buy and sell items at an on-campus bazaar. The extremely low per-pantie price the teacher purchased them for suggests that the underwear was either used or part of some sort of sudden store liquidation. Even if the merchandise was brand-new, though, it’s hard to imagine female students buying lingerie from their male teacher, regardless of how much of a discount from retail prices he’s offering, and so the more probable scenario would seem to be that the teacher was hoping that some teen boys with raging hormones would be in the market for a pair of panties.

▼ “Yo, Teach, can you hook me up with a G-string?”

After failing to work out a plan to unload his merchandise in October of 2016, the teacher continued to store the pantie stash at school, perhaps hoping to sell them at the October 2017 culture festival. However, their discovery last July prevented that, and the teacher has been on leave ever since. This Monday, the Kurume Board of Education passed judgement in the teacher’s disciplinary hearing, suspending him for three months.

Some might say that’s an inadequate punishment, especially since the pantie incident isn’t this teacher’s first case of questionable conduct. In 2016, it was discovered that he’d been breaking educator regulations by sending emails to students through a private email account, and in 2017 students reported that he slapped a pupil in the head over a dress code violation. You could even go so far as to say that he’s really not cut out to be an educator, and the teacher himself apparently agrees. Following the board’s ruling, he decided to do them one better on the three-month suspension, and has resigned from his position, which now leaves him free to start a legitimate retail business and sell all the panties he wants.

Source: Livedoor News/Nishi Nihon Shimbun via Hachima Kiko, Mainichi Shimbun
Top image: Pakutaso
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