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Paper short abstract:

Challenging conventional depictions of the postwar Japanese police, this paper explores the writings of police official Sassa Atsuyuki, arguing that his writings depict the police as both the central subject of Japan’s postwar history as well as operating within a broader Cold War order.

Paper long abstract:

Studies of the postwar Japanese police usually approach the agency as both severed from prewar institutions and practices, as well as isolated from international trends in Cold War policing. In both approaches, the police serve as a kind of synecdoche for understanding the particularities of Japan, presented as embodying distinct cultural attributes informing the professionalism, efficiency, or social networks that made postwar Japan what one foreign observer called “heaven for a cop.” However, what is missing in these analyses is not only attention to how the legacy of prewar policing informed the postwar police, but also the global context that Japanese police officials saw themselves as operating within. To challenge these approaches, I turn to the writings of police official and security expert Sassa Atsuyuki (1930-2018) who wrote voluminously on his international travels, collaborations, and experience overseeing some of the most important domestic police operations in the postwar period. I argue that Sassa’s writings are not simply a history of the police, but present the police as both the subject of Japan’s postwar history as well as operating within a broader Cold War order. When read critically, Sassa’s writings allow us to reconsider Japan’s place within the Cold War, how legacies of the prewar informed representations of the postwar police, and the central but often overlooked importance of police power in shaping postwar Japan.