Epilogue

The reader may be wondering how to reconcile the above conclusions with the very positive appraisals of the postwar Japanese police, produced by such writers as David Bayley ¹ and Craig Parker ² in the 1970s and 1980s respectively. The principal reason these writers held up the Japanese police as a model seems to have been their admiration for Japan’s success in holding back the wave of crime that was engulfing other developed countries. Bayley attributes the low crime rate in large part to the kôban and foot patrol systems that represent the focus of his work. Parker places more emphasis on the nature of Japanese society, its mesh of constraints and social sanctions. Still, he is highly impressed by the Japanese police, interestingly proposing the transplantation of its ‘quasi-national’ system to the US ³ — ironic, given the US’s attempt during the Occupation to transplant its highly decentralized system to Japan. Whilst commending Bayley for his rich portrait of police patrol behaviour, Thomas Rohlen remarked that he had not addressed ‘the question of the police’s role in Japanese polities’, despite its being ‘a matter… of considerable interest given pre-war police conduct’. ⁴ The same could be said of Parker’s book.