ABSTRACT
Prominent explanations of crime and crime control in Japan note the transition of the police away from the authoritarian structures of the 1930s and stress the impact of U.S. occupation policies as facilitating the transition towards democracy. Other explanations place greater emphasis on the recentralization of the police and the embedded aspects of social control that followed the occupation and were institutionalized in the 1954 revisions to the 1947 Police Law and the establishment of the National Police Agency.1 In contrast, relatively little attention has been focused on the unintended legacy of occupation policies on crime and crime control in Japan.2
