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Paper short abstract

This presentation first examines how issues of access, researcher roles, and positionality were addressed in pioneering ethnographic studies of the Japanese police, before turning to a contemporary example drawn from the researcher’s ongoing PhD project.

Paper long abstract

With more than 6000 kōban (neighborhood police boxes) and 6000 chūzaisho (residential police boxes) dispersed across urban and rural areas, police boxes are an iconic presence on Japanese street corners. Paradoxically, despite the omnipresence of police officers in everyday life, detailed ethnographic studies of the Japanese police remain few and far between, and there has been no coherent inquiry into the process of conducting such research.

This presentation is organized in two parts. The first examines how questions of access, researcher roles, and positionality were addressed in pioneering ethnographic studies of the Japanese police, including those conducted by Japanese scholars (e.g. Miyazawa, 1985) and foreign scholars (e.g. Bayley, 1976; Ames, 1981; Craig-Parker, 2001) during the latter half of the 20th century. The second parts shifts to a contemporary example, reflecting on how language, gender, and culture shape the negotiation of access and building of rapport with Japanese (police) respondents within the context of the researcher’s PhD project on policing responses to image-based sexual abuse in Japan. Finally, this presentation will briefly consider how ethnographic research on the Japanese police occupies a liminal space: it neither fits neatly within the framework of Western criminology nor fully aligns with the orientations of Southern criminology.