No one suggested that this movement has appeared in Japan. Rather, the protests in the US and other countries (the UK, in particular) have started a larger, international conversation of the role of police in society--obviously, it varies substantially. That said, the US experience demonstrates that increased policing often comes at the expense of other social services, with fatal consequences for people's lives and post-prison prospects. This might have especial relevance for Japan given that Japanese courts almost never acquit those who are tried.

Given all of this, I think it is incumbent upon us as responsible academics from a variety of backgrounds to contemplate whether an increase in policing in Japan can or should be characterized as a victory, or as a desirable outcome.

Social science isn't just about observing what is there, but projecting what the likely consequences of social movements, government policies, etc. might be, based on other cases that might have applicable wisdom. On a topic closer to my own specialty, Japanese immigration policy is routinely compared with other, vastly different policies--in part because Japan's restrictive immigration policies don't seem to be doing Japanese society any favors in terms of preventing population crises. We can reasonably predict that Japan's immigration policies will continue to serve it poorly and that more open models should be adopted for a variety of practical and justice-based reasons. Likewise, based on what we've seen of excessive policing elsewhere, we can reasonably caution against increasing policing in other countries, like Japan, that do not yet suffer from this problem.

All best,
Erika

Dr. Erika R. Alpert (she/they)
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
School of Sciences and Humanities
Nazarbayev University
On 7 Oct 2020, 08:00 +0600, SSJ-Forum Moderator <ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp>, wrote:

From: Jean-Christophe Helary

<jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org>

Date: 2020/10/01

On Oct 1, 2020, at 12:10, SSJ-Forum Moderator

<ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp> wrote:

From: Lawrence Repeta <repeta55@live.com>

Date: 2020/09/27

By the way, I'm not aware of any efforts to "de-fund" the Japanese

police. If any Forum members do know of such a development, please send
a message.


Why would there be a movement to "de-fund" the Japanese police ? The
movement seems to have started in the US as a response to:

1) the over-militarization of local police forces due to the relatively
recently uncovered transfer of military surpluses allowed by a Pentagon
program that started in 1990 and allegedly (as of 2014) transferred
about 5 billion USD worth of equipment to local police forces (to "wage
the war on drugs")

2) the defunding of local social services that forces the police forces
to answer calls that should otherwise be handled by more relevant public
services (for ex. homelessness support, drug addiction support, mental
health support, etc.)

3) the lack of proper de-escalation training of local police forces that
frequently leads to police shootings in cases where violence was clearly
not required (linked to 2) above)

4) the infiltration of white supremacist groups in local police forces
that aggravates 3) above.

5) and, of course, the over-policing of poorer areas with the clear
objective to increase the income of local police forces.


None of the above phenomenons are seen in Japan, at least certainly not
to the scale they are seen in the US (specifically 2) and 5), especially
since local forces income sources does *not* directly comes from locally
paid fines).

There are probably a number of issues with the Japanese police forces,
but I fail to see which one would have the Japanese people ask for their
de-funding.

Jean-Christophe Helary
MA student, University of Paris