Paris Olympics 2024: Japanese teams to wear infrared-proof uniforms to fight camera voyeurism – Technologist

Japan’s volleyball, track and field, table tennis, and other teams will wear uniforms made of a cutting-edge new fabric that absorbs infrared light, preventing infrared cameras from seeing through to athletes’ underwear or bodies underneath, Le Monde first reported.

Japanese sports equipment company Mizuno designed the outfits specifically to combat the rising trend of voyeurs producing and circulating compromising photos of athletes on pornographic websites, Mizuno said in a press release.

Kazuya Tajima, who works on Mizuno’s development team, told Le Monde he hopes that the “use of this fabric by top athletes will make society aware that voyeurism is unacceptable,” adding that “cameras are becomingly increasingly sophisticated.”

The fabric uses specialised material that absorbs light from the infrared range into the composition of the textile itself, making the fabric “nearly wholly opaque” under both visible and infrared light, Mizuno explains. And that, Mizuno says, “can help reduce the number of athletes that fall victim to illicit infrared photography.”

Development on the technology began after athletes complained to the Japanese Olympic Committee in 2020 about revealing photos of themselves shared on social media with sexually explicit captions, The Japan Times reported.

Though the trend may be getting more attention lately, it’s nothing new.

A member of Japan’s badminton team, Reiko Shiota, who competed in the 2008 Beijing Games and 2012 London Games, has been a victim of photos of her breasts and lower body circulating online, Le Monde reported.

And Japanese gymnast Airi Hatakeyama has also been targeted by people sexualising suggestive photos of her, even when she was a minor, according to Le Monde.

Some of the voyeurs have even been caught in the act. In 2023, a man was charged for filming female athletes’ lower bodies during a running match in Kyoto, and ahead of the 2021 Tokyo Games, another man was arrested for selling infrared photos of a female volleyball player on a porn website, Le Monde reported.