The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 44 | Number 1 | Article ID 4394 | Nov 02, 2015

1

The People's Police: The Tokyo Police Museum's Version ofHistory

Chelsea Szendi Schieder

Introduction

A bright orange character stands at theentrance of the Tokyo Police Museum. Armsoutstretched to welcome visitors, “Piipo-kun”embodies the ideal of the Tokyo Police as thep e o p l e ' s p o l i c e ; r e s e m b l i n g a nanthropomorphized mouse, he has big eyes, bigears, and an antenna sprouting from his head.1

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police adopted thisfantastical mascot character in 1987.2 Anexplanatory placard notes that Piipo-kun's largeeyes see into all corners of the world, his bigears catch the voices of the city's residents, andhis antenna allows him to tune into all themovements in society. "Piipo," is a combinationof the English words "people" and "police;" heis a manifestation of the contemporary ideal ofthe "people's police," in which the "people" andthe "police" are melded. All human activity issubject to his control (visual, aural, and evenantennal). He greets museum visitors with openarms just outside the entrance. Piipo-kunsuggests a completely benign police subject,open and in touch with the local population.3

Piipo-kun statue

The Tokyo Police Museum's assorted displaysalso relate a historical narrative in which theTokyo Metropolitan Police are portrayed asconsummate protectors of the people over its140-year history.4 The Tokyo MetropolitanPolice opened its museum in the summer of1 9 9 4 , a s p a r t o f t h e D e p a r t m e n t ' scommemorative activities for their 120 th

anniversary. Built in the former PoliceDepartment Public Relations Center inKyobashi, near Ginza, the admission-free

APJ | JF 13 | 44 | 1

2

museum aims to “encourage Tokyo citizens toknow more about the history of the policedepartment.”5 The four floors of the modestbuilding include several artifacts anddocuments, ranging from Meiji-Era woodblockprints and police uniforms to the first policehelicopter. It also includes many special gamesand attractions, including a driving simulationvideo and small uniforms that children canwear while they pose in the various policevehicles in the lobby. Exhibits emphasize policeefforts to enforce order and protect the peopleagainst the threats of crime and trafficaccidents. Other displays show policeprotecting the government against dangerouspolitical threats. How the museum conveys adepoliticized image of harmonious cooperationbetween the police and the public anddiscusses cases in which the police confrontedprotest illustrate what constitutes a policeversion of history in modern Japan.

Exterior of Tokyo Police Museum

Representing the People's Police

The figure of Piipo-kun is a contemporaryrepresentation of a perfect union between thepeople and the police, but the ideal of thepolice as a gentle protector is not new.Umemor i Naoyuk i argues that suchcharacteristics as a “paternalistic attitude” andan “all-encompassing definition of thepolicemen's role” developed soon after theestablishment of the Meiji state in 1968.6 Toillustrate this point, Umemori quotes a popular1876 police textbook written by KawajiToshiyoshi. Kawaji, memorialized at the TokyoPolice Museum as the founder of the modernpolice in Japan, wrote: “A nation is a family.The government is the parents. Its people arechildren. The police are their dry nurse.”7 This

APJ | JF 13 | 44 | 1

3

statement invokes the prewar politicalmetaphor of the Japanese nation-state asfamily, and suggests that the police arebenevolent figures who not only protect butalso nurture the people. In this representation,the role of the police is expansive regarding thepeople, and also paternalistic, regarding themas wards of the state and the police.

Much of the Museum's displays and interactiveexhibits emphasize the police's protective rolesof fighting crime, providing disaster relief, andmaintaining traffic safety. Pedagogical videosand games instruct visitors on how to helpthwart criminals and stay safe.

An informative video on “protecting order inTokyo” – available in both an adult and achildren's version – introduces the varioustasks and divisions of the Tokyo MetropolitanPolice, beginning with the most visibleeveryday police activities at the local police box(kōban). A more recent division, launched inFebruary 1995, indicates the expansive policeinterpretation of fighting crime in Japan; the“Lifestyle Safety Bureau” was born of areformed “Anti-Crime Bureau,” and describesits mission as protecting citizens' lives from “allkinds of crime,” ranging from gun control tomonitoring the potentially illegal activities ofyouth and foreigners.8 The name of the unitgoes beyond mere crime prevention, however,and suggests protecting a specific “lifestyle,” oreven a world view.

Anti-Crime Corner

Policing Protest: A Police Version ofHistory

Crime fighting and traffic control are generallyless controversial aspects of policing work;when the police confront citizen protest,however, various conflicting world viewspresent in a given society come into conflict.9

The Tokyo Police Museum includes exhibits onpolicing protest mostly to illustrate cases inwhich police faced “crises.” The treatment ofthese events, distinct from day-to-day crimefighting because protest challenges the largerpolitical order, suggests that the root of thecritical danger was an excess of ideologicalzeal.

The presentation of three historical crisesdisplayed in a corner of the Museum suits theself-representation of the police as ostensiblynon-ideological protectors of order, and alsodemonstrates the strong influence of the eventsof the late 1960s and early 1970s in formingthe contemporary self-image of the police. Thethree cases included in the exhibit are: TheFebruary 26 Incident (2.26 Incident) of 1936,the Nihon University "disturbance" of 1968,and the Asama Mountain Lodge (Asama sansō)incident of 1972. All three of these eventsembroiled the police in larger political conflictsand created police casualties.

APJ | JF 13 | 44 | 1

4

Historical Crises Display

The first case, the 2.26 Incident, was anattempted coup d'état organized by youngofficers in the Imperial Japanese Army. Thelatter two incidents grew out of 1960s studentactivism. The Asama Mountain Lodge (AsamaSansō) Incident of February 1972 was a policesiege of a group of militant radicals on the runwho held a woman hostage and exchangedgunfire with police for almost ten days in whatbecame one of the most publicized mediaevents of the 1970s.10 It is also frequentlyinvoked as a marker of the decline of popularsupport for youth activism and radical leftistpolitics, since the five young men involved inthe incident were members of the United RedArmy, and a subsequently revealed bloodyinternal purge within the group prompted apublic outcry and self-reflection among manyformer radicals.11 These two events – the 2.26Incident and the Asama Sansō Incident –shocked the public and transformed politics.However, the more interesting inclusion in themuseum's exhibit is that of the "NihonUniversity disturbance" of 1968. It is agenerally forgotten part of a largely neglectedhistory, that of the campus-based studentactivism in the late 1960s. Its inclusionalongside such high-profile historical eventsunderscores the police view of studentradicalism as a threat to social order and is arare case of public commemoration of what, at

the time, was a heated university dispute.

The exhibit in the Police Museum frames thestudent movement in the late 1960s asideologically dangerous. It reads, "From 1966on, extreme leftist violent students attemptedto make campuses into revolutionaryfortresses, radicalizing disputes at variousuniversities." The display presents the 1968death of a police officer who faced off againststudents occupying the main building of theeconomics department of Nihon University.Students at Nihon University, like students atso many campuses in Japan in the late 1960s,barricaded buildings, forced negotiations withtheir administrations, and clashed with thepolice. They cited both campus issues, such asrising tuition fees, as well as internationalcontroversies, such as Japan's collaborationwith the United States in the unpopularVietnam War. At the peak of campus disputesin the late 1960s, about 80 percent of thenation's campuses—165 schools—were involvedin some kind of political contestation.12 Atseventy of these, students built barricades inwhich they physically blocked schooladministrators from campus buildings.13

In the late 1960s, police casualties led to acrack down on campus protest, althoughstudent activist casualties also caused thepublic to sympathize with protestors. The deathof a police officer during the Nihon Universitystruggle persuaded many politicians that the"violence of the campus disputes should nolonger be allowed," in the words of one LDPlawmaker.14 While citing the high number ofpolice injured while managing campusunrest—over 10,000 of whom 400 werehospitalized—he did not mention the numbersof student and other activists also injured. Thenumbers of injured students, however, was alsoquite large over a similar period; medicalexpenses for such students was part of thesupport work undertaken by citizens' groupsdesigned to offer legal support to studentactivists.15 Testifying to more widespread

APJ | JF 13 | 44 | 1

5

public sympathy for campus protest, one policeofficer recalled his chilly reception by medicalstaff upon arrival at a hospital in an ambulancealso full of injured student activists following aclash with a street demonstration. Fearing thehostility of the public hospital's staff, he wasgreatly relieved when he was transferred to apolice hospital.16 Although difficult to measure,the popular support enjoyed by the studentmovement was a key factor in challenging thelegitimacy of the forceful policing of protest atseveral moments in the late 1960s.

In general, the displays at the Tokyo PoliceMuseum elide the vigorous debates in postwarJapan about how to protect Japan's nascentdemocracy from the police acting on behalf ofthe state. Disputes about policing are excluded.However, debates in the 1950s often broughtup the issue of police violence, usually againstprotesting or striking workers. Labor unionsthat were legalized and protected by thepostwar Constitution, often tested the limits ofwhat was permissible in postwar protest. In theDiet, politicians decried not only direct policeviolence toward protestors, but also policeconfiscation of information on protestparticipants, such as news photographs of labordisputes.17 By excluding such contentiousissues faced by a reconstituted national policeforce in the wake of war and occupation, theexhibit conforms to a view of the wartimeperiod as a historical aberration to Japan'smodern national project.

Asahi Shinbun (via Wikicommons) Photograph ofJune 18, 1960 Protest at Diet

The photograph on display at the Tokyo PoliceMuseum shows far fewer participants, protesting in a“zig-zag formation” associated with the radicalstudent movement.

The historical reality of reestablishing apostwar police force, however, was much morecomplex, and the memory of the wartime roleof the police, in particular in counteringprotest, was recent and raw through thepostwar period. There was no question that thepolice had been complicit with the wartimestate. The question was how to prevent policingpolicies after the war from crushing dissent inthe name of law and order. In the 1950s, it wasnot only members of the opposition parties,mainly the legalized Japan Communist Party(JCP) and Japan Socialist Party (JSP) who took

APJ | JF 13 | 44 | 1

6

up this issue, but also representatives of thenewly unified and ruling Liberal DemocraticParty (LDP), who were generally moreconservative. Nakano Bunmon of the LDPgarnered applause when, in late 1958, hequestioned the good faith of recent policeattempts to woo the public at a House ofRepresentatives hearing, declaring that it madehim wonder "exactly for whose 'communitysafety and order' are the police working?" Thepolitical mood was such that Nakano evendeclared that under this kind of law and ordersystem, peasant uprisings ( ikki ) and"revolutions" (like the Meiji Revolution, headded) could not have happened. His uneasestemmed from a feeling that the public wassimply being told to trust the police without thepolice earning that trust. He noted also that theexperience of the wartime influenced hisunderstanding of this situation: "I totallybelieved during the War. Those who said then,'just trust us, just trust us' led us all astray. Inthat same way, we're being told the same thingin the postwar period: 'just trust us, just trustus,' and I just can't trust them."18 Warinessabout the basic integrity of the police in theirinteractions with citizens colored discussionsabout expanding police powers at the highestlevels of the government.

The political turmoil surrounding clashes in theDiet at the time of the 1960 revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo) prompted debateon whether the police or protesters posed thegreater threat to Japan's nascent postwardemocracy. As student activists involved in theAnpo demonstrations began to test the limits ofpolicing, forcing their way into the Dietgrounds on November 27, 1959, an LDPmember decried the act as one of desecratingt h e " s a c r e d p a l a c e " o f t h e c h o s e nrepresentatives of the people, and called forincreased security in the name of democracy.In response, the Minister of State concededthat past police responses may have been a bit"indulgent" with the protestors.19 The June 15,1960 death of a female student activist, Kanba

Michiko, shocked the nation, but left opinionssharply divided on the source of the violencet h a t k i l l e d h e r : s o m e b l a m e d t h edemonstrators, but many turned Kanba into amartyr of state violence, and a symbol of thefragility of postwar democracy.20 At the PoliceMuseum, in contrast, the mass demonstrationssurrounding the 1960 revision of Anpo, and thepolicing of those protests, are reduced to onephotograph. Aerial photographs taken at thepeak of citizen protests show the streetsoutside the gates of the Diet filled withdemonstrative citizens. Photographs taken atground level, such as those taken by HamayaHiroshi, also revealed the broad range ofparticipants in the mass protests.21

Tokyo Police Museum Photograph of AnpoProtests at Diet

The caption describes the police as"protecting the Diet" from “screaming”demonstrators, reducing complex andpassionate negotiations about citizenparticipation in politics and the potentialfor police repression into an instance ofmainta in ing order in the face offanaticism.

APJ | JF 13 | 44 | 1

7

Conclusion

While modest in size and influence, the versionof history on display at the Tokyo PoliceMuseum stresses a harmonious relationshipbetween the officers who maintain civic orderand the city's residents. The Museum's displaysonly portray protest as a threat to politicalorder, rather than a potential expression ofpolitical will. However, moments in whichcitizens engaged in contentious politicschallenge this narrative of consensus andapolitical police protection. If the police areultimately tasked with protecting the state,what happens in situations in which the publictakes to the streets to critique the state'spolicies?

In moments of conflict between the state and amobilized segment of the public, the role of thepolice quickly becomes another site ofcontestation. Anyone who has attended recentprotests against the Abe administration'spolicies can attest to the heavy policemanagement of these events; they act as abarrier between demonstrators and the Tokyopopulation and seal off demonstrators from thespaces of political power, such as the DietBuilding. The ideal of the police as the people'spolice helps explain the polite, but firm,gestures officers display to most protestparticipants, asking them calmly to cross thestreet, or stay on one side or the other of apolice blockade. However, it will be surprisingif critiques of the current administration do notextend to examine the role of the TokyoMetropolitan Police in protecting the stateagainst the people. In particular, theparticipation of many segments of Japanesesociety new to street protests, most notablyyoung people, suggest that experiences infacing off against police at demonstrations maygenerate new interpretations of the police rolein mediating or suppressing the demands of thepeople against state policies, posing one of thecritical questions of democratic rule.

Chelsea Szendi Schieder is an AssistantProfessor in the Department of PoliticalScience and Economics at Meiji University. Sheobtained her Ph.D. in Modern Japanese Historyfrom Columbia University in 2014. She haspublished in Monthly Review and Dissent and iscurrently working on her book, tentativelytitled Coed Revolution, on the political meaningof female student participation in postwarstudent activism in Japan.

Recommended citation: Chelsea SzendiSchieder, "The People's Police: The TokyoPolice Museum's Version of History", The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 44, No. 1,November 2, 2015.

Related articles

• Robin O’Day, Differentiating SEALDs fromFreeters, and Precariats: the politics of youthmovements in con temporary Japan(https://apjjf.org/-Robin-O_Day/4376/article.html)

(https://apjjf.org/-Robin-O_Day/4376/article.html)• David Slater, Robin O’Day, Satsuki Uno,Love Kindstrand and Chiharu Takano, SEALDs(Students Emergency Action for LiberalDemocracy): Research Note on ContemporaryY o u t h P o l i t i c s i n J a p a n(https://apjjf.org/-Chiharu-Takano/4375/article.html)

(https://apjjf.org/-Chiharu-Takano/4375/article.html)• Nicola Liscutin, Indignez-Vous!‘Fukushima,’ New Media and Anti-NuclearA c t i v i s m i n J a p a n(https://apjjf.org/-Nicola-Liscutin/3649/article.html)

(https://apjjf.org/-Nicola-Liscutin/3649/article.html)• Noriko Manabe, Music in JapaneseAntinuclear Demonstrations: The Evolution of aC o n t e n t i o u s P e r f o r m a n c e M o d e l(https://apjjf.org/-Noriko-MANABE/4015/article.html)

APJ | JF 13 | 44 | 1

8

(https://apjjf.org/-Noriko-MANABE/4015/article.html)• Jeremy Kuzmarov, Police Training,“Nation-Building,” and Political Repression inP o s t c o l o n i a l S o u t h K o r e a(https://apjjf.org/-Jeremy-Kuzmarov/3785/article.html)

(https://apjjf.org/-Jeremy-Kuzmarov/3785/article.html)• Linda Hoaglund, ANPO: Art X War – InH a v o c ’ s W a k e(https://apjjf.org/-Linda-Hoaglund/3616/article.html)

Notes

1 The suffix "kun" indicates that Piipo is male.

2 These often go by the term 'yuru kyara'(wobbly characters), coined by cultural criticMiura Jun in 2004 in response to the manymascots created to promote agencies,localities, and events. See Debra Occhi, “YuruKyara Humanity and the Uncanny Instability ofBorders in the Construction of JapaneseIdenties and Aesthetics,” Japan Studies - TheFrontier, n.d., 7–17.

3 The rise of military manga in Japan alsostrives to portray military organizations with a“cuddly, depoliticized image,” as SabineFrühstück shows. See Sabine Frühstück,"AMPO in Crisis? US Military's Manga OffersUpbeat Take on US-Japan Relations,"(https://apjjf.org/-Sabine-Fruhstuck/3442/article.html) The Asia-Pacific Journal, 45-3-10,November 8, 2010.

4 Many major cities, and some smaller ones,also have police museums. Some examplesinclude the New York City Police Museum, theCity of London Police Museum, Paris's Muséede la Préfecture de Police, the Beijing PoliceMuseum, Hong Kong's Police Museum,Singapore's Police Heritage Center, Cairo'sNational Police Museum, and Sao Paolo'sMuseum of the Civil Police. The InternationalPolice Association list of police museums in theUnited States includes 21 police museums in

C a l i f o r n i a a l o n e . “ M u s e u m s . ”(http://www.ipa-usa.org/?page=Museums)International Police Association. July 2016.Accessed November 1, 2015.

5 “Keisatsuchō no 'keisatsuhakubutsukan' gaōpun” [Metropolitan Police Department opensits 'Police Museum'], Mainichi shinbun, July 14,1994. p.

6 Umemori Naoyuki.“Modernization ThroughColonial Mediations: The Establishment ofPolice and Prison System in Meiji Japan” (Ph.D.Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2002). 30.

7 Ibid., 31.

8 “Hanzai-bu ga kaishō, seikatsu anzen-bu ni”[The anti-crime bureau renames as the lifestylesafety bureau], Asahi shinbun, Feb. 2, 1995.

9 Donatella della Porta, “Social Movements andthe State: Thoughts on the Policing of Protest,”in Comparative Perspectives on SocialMovements, ed. Doug McAdam, John D.McCarthy, and Zald Mayer (CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996), 65.

10 Yoshimi Shunya reduces it completely to amedia event Shunya Yoshimi, Posuto-SengoShakai [Post-Postwar Society], Shiriizu NihonKingendaishi 9 (Iwanami shinsho, 2009).

11 Patricia G. Steinhoff, “Death by Defeatismand Other Fables: The Social Dynamics of theRengō Sekigun Purge,” in Japanese SocialOrganization, ed. Takie Sugiyama Lebra(University of Hawaii Press, 1992); YoshikuniIgarashi, “Dead Bodies and Living Guns: TheUnited Red Army and Its Deadly Pursuit ofRevolution, 1971-1972,” Japanese Studies 27,no. 2 (September 2007): 119-137.

12 Yukiko Sawara, “The University Struggles,”in Zengakuren: Japan's Revolutionary Students,ed. Stuart Dowsey (Berkeley: The Ishi Press,1970), 138.

APJ | JF 13 | 44 | 1

9

13 Takazawa Kōji, Takagi Masayuki, and KurataKazunari, Shinsayoku nijûnenshi: hanranno kiseki [A Twenty-Year History of the NewLeft: Miracle of Revolt] (Tokyo: Shinsensha,1981), 117.

14 House of Representatives, Plenary Session.April 17, 1969. Comment #20. Accessed July5, 2015. “Kokkai kaigi kiroku shisutomu (DietDebate Records System.” 66/27.

15 For more on such support groups active bothin the 1970s and today, see William Andrews,“Trial Support Groups Lobby for JapanesePrisoner Rights, Fight to Rectify Injustices,”Japan Focus 12, no. 21 (May 25, 2014).

16 Hiroshi Harada, Aru keisatsukan no shōwasesō shi [Showa History as Told by aPoliceman] (Tokyo: Soshisha, 2011), 135.

1 7 House of Representat ives, BudgetCommittee. November 1, 1958, Comment #66.Accessed July 5, 2015. "Kokkai kaigi kiroku

shisutomu (Diet Debate Records System)."Session 30/5.

1 8 House o f Representa t i ves , Loca lAdministration Committee Public Hearing.November 4, 1958, Comment # 4. AccessedJuly 5, 2015. "Kokkai kaigi kiroku shisutomu(Diet Debate Records System)." Session 30/2.

19 House of Representatives, Plenary Session.November 30 1959, Comment # 4. AccessedJuly 5, 2015. "Kokkai kaigi kiroku shisutomu(Diet Debate Records System)." Session 33/13.

2 0 See Chelsea Szendi Schieder, “CoedRevolution: The Female Student in theJapanese New Left, 1957-1972” (Ph.D.Dissertation, Columbia University, 2014).

21 For Hamaya's photographs and historicalcontext see Justin Jesty, “Tokyo 1960: Days ofR a g e & G r i e f , ”(http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/tokyo_1960/anp2_essay01.html) MIT VisualizingCultures, 2012.