ABSTRACT

Policing, even stop and account, despite being tied to the local, has been confronted with the current pervasiveness of global interconnectedness. The complicated interaction between the global and local in the field of policing, however, is always the result of political and cultural assumptions in each society This article firstly offers a brief description of recent Japanese policy and practice of police stop and account as part of a ‘War on Illegal Immigrants’. While reflecting on the global trend of criminalisation of immigration, it then explains political and cultural implications which have brought about this extraordinary policy and practice in the context of modern Japanese society. It concludes that recent development of Japanese police stop and account policy and practice can be best understood as the site for interaction between the national narratives in relation to crime and ethnicity, and the corresponding apparatus of globalisation.