This article linked above is similar to another article that Japanese photographer friends were intensely sharing/debating/blowing up my Facebook feed with last week.
That article, (In Japanese only) essentially warns that there is a lot of room for interpretation in Japan’s Anti-nuisence Ordanance (迷惑防止条例 / meiwaku boushi jyourei )- so much room in fact, that the writer, lawyer Hiroshi Yamaguchi, cautions that simply pointing your camera at a woman could land you in trouble with the police, regardless whether a picture was taken or not.
This doesn’t mean that such arrests are common and photography on the streets is endangered, but rather points out that being in the wrong place at the wrong time snapping the wrong person could show how the deck is stacked against the one holding the camera, should it become a police matter.
In a similar vein, Japanese television too, has recently gone to great lengths to blur out the faces of any Japanese people who happen to enter the frame when shooting on location in Tokyo. The nightly broadcast of celebrities filmed enthusisatically tasting local cuisine on the streets show them surrounded by a populace of blurred faces. Curiously, this dutiful concern for privacy does not carry over to any of the many, many, programs filmed abroad when those same entertainers are shown visiting anywhere outside of Japan.