The Japanese Police State

This is a specialized study of the organization,ideology and activities of the Japanese Special Higherpolice, the Tokkô, notorious in pre-war and wartime years for its harassment of opponents of the government. Within a comparative framework, this book explains the elements of Tokkô brutality and abuses of authority, analyses police traditions and looks at the Tokkô's interactions with other Japanese institutions and the broader sociopolitical climate. Sources include confidential Tokkô documents and interviews with former Tokkô officials. First published in 1990, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.

In sharp contrast to the United States, Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and practically no police brutality or corruption. Urban congestion is often blamed for the soaring crime rate in the United States and the waning public confidence in the American police force, yet Japan's population per square mile is almost thirty times that of ours. In Forces of Order, originally published in 1976 and now thoroughly revised and expanded, David Bayley examines the reasons behind Japan's phenomenal success when it comes to public order. The Japanese police force is the world's most developed model of "community policing." To study it, Bayley conducted hundreds of interviews with police officers in Japan and spent many hours observing them on patrol, mostly at night. Making explicit comparisons between Japan and the United States, he analyzes Japan's record in policing and crime, the life of patrol officers, police relations with the community, police discipline and responsibility, the police as an institution, victimless crime, and deviance and authority in Japanese culture. The essential lesson of the book is that the incidence of crime as well as the nature of police practices is rooted in long-standing traditions that are profoundly related to fundamental matters of morality, culture, and historical experience. Bayley shows that the key differences between Japan and the United States do not stem from the economic or political structures of the two countries, but from the characteristic way in which people are expected to relate to one another and the sorts of social institutions that shape and reinforce those expectations.

This book examines the complex and paradoxical relationship between authoritarian policing and the social and economic modernization of postwar Germany's largest and most historically "authentic" state, as Bavaria joined the rest of the Federal Republic in a passage from postwar crisis to consumer prosperity.

What role do their respective police systems play in the very different crime rates of Japan and the United States? This study draws on direct observation of Japanese police practices combined with interviews of police officials, criminal justice practitioners, legal scholars, and private citizens. It compares many Japanese police practices side by side with U.S. police practices, and places the role of the police in the broader cultural and historical Japanese framework.

In all major categories of crime, statistics show clearly that Japan has dramatically lower crime rates than the United States. How can this be accounted for, considering that Japan's population is as urbanized, industrialized, and sophisticated as those of the most advanced Western nations? One of the major factors is the very different way that the Japanese police system is viewed and operates compared with police in the U.S. This study examines those differences through direct observation of Japanese police practices combines with interviews of Japanese police officials, criminal justice practitioners, legal scholars, and private citizens. Written by a teaching criminologist, it compares many Japanese police practices side by side with U.S. police practices, and places the role of the police in the broader cultural and historical Japanese framework.

This study focuses on the problems that attended the reform of the Japanese police during the American Occupation of Japan (1945-52). Drawing on primary sources Aldous explores the Occupation's programme of 'democratization' and its legacy.

In Japan and the Security of Asia Louis Hayes studies modern Japan's frustrated search for national security. The book charts Japan's attempts to fashion its own place in the sun in the face of Great Power interventionism and national demands for regional hegemony: first through nascent internationalism and later disastrous totalitarianism that culminated in war in the Pacific. Hayes expertly tracks Japan's shifting foreign-policy goals up to the present day, moving from the preservation of the nation-state by force to the drive for economic self-aggrandizement as a Cold War client of the United States. The book reveals to the student of modern Asian history a twenty-first century Japan that has rejected unarmed neutrality and is reasserting its security independence in post-Cold War Asia.