Japan’s police face calls for overhaul as discipline cases hit 10-year high

Japanese police officers who had to be disciplined hit a 10-year high last year, prompting calls for an overhaul for the force. Figures released by the National Police Agency on Thursday showed that 337 personnel had to be disciplined over the course of the year. The problem has become so serious that a leading Japanese newspaper published an editorial on January 26 describing the scale and sheer number of incidents as “hard to believe” and demanding that senior management “rebuild the organisation”. The Mainichi took particular issue with the scandals that have shaken prefectural forces, saying: “This cannot be dismissed as simply a ‘lapse in discipline’. Organisational dysfunction is resulting in irreversible consequences.” Shinichi Ishizuka, founder of the Tokyo-based Criminal Justice Future think tank, said the police were facing a series of challenges to their institution. “In some of these cases we see corruption and officers taking payments; in others, there are officers who want to make a name for themselves and go too far,” he told This Week in Asia. “But I would say the biggest problem is simply the quality of the young men and women who are joining the force today.” Ishizuka, who used to teach at the police academy, said he noticed “that the standards of the young men and women who were starting out in the police was not the same as just a few years previously”. Japan is facing a worsening labour shortage and that is having an inevitable impact on police recruitment. Young men and women with skills that are in demand are choosing the private sector because of better pay and opportunities, according to Ishizuka. There had also been changes in Japanese society over the last 20 years or so, he said, with police officers no longer enjoying the unquestioned authority that they once had and more people willing to challenge them publicly. “Police are less and less respected today.” Crescendo of complaints Concern over the behaviour of officers reached a crescendo in December. An assistant inspector in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s organised crime division was indicted on suspicion of sharing information with a tokuryu criminal group. Part of a new generation of anonymous, loosely organised gangs, these groups are taking over Japan’s underworld from traditional yakuza gangs. The officer, who has not been named, allegedly told the group the location of a surveillance camera in an area where it was illegally arranging for women to work in sex-related businesses. Authorities believe he may also have shared other information that would have been useful to the group in return for money. That was just the latest in a series of unsavoury reports involving the police throughout the year. In Hyogo prefecture, 50 officers were disciplined for drinking and gambling while on duty, as well as illegally betting in online casinos. Other officers had received gifts including alcohol from civilian companies. A crime laboratory technician in Saga was found to have falsified DNA analysis reports in an investigation while in Kanagawa prefecture, a woman was murdered after officers dismissed her concerns that she was being stalked. Tokyo police came under the spotlight for a 2021 investigation into a chemical machinery company that they accused of exporting spray-drying machines that had military applications without a licence. Despite company officials protesting that a licence was not required, the police went ahead with filing charges. The case collapsed before it could come to court and the police were in June ordered to pay 166 million yen (US$1 million) in damages. The 337 officers and personnel who were disciplined in 2025 was an increase of 98 from the previous year. Of those, 64 were arrested. “Police activities are based on the trust of the people, so there are concerns about lax discipline. I want [the police] to make sure they take steps to restore trust,” Jiro Akama, the chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, said in a press conference on Thursday. Speeding and sleeping A great deal of work needs to be done. In November, Hiroyuki Matsuda, a sergeant in Osaka prefecture, was arrested for shoplifting more than 60 items valued at around 40,000 yen from a toy store in Osaka City. During questioning, Matsuda said he was planning to give the items to his children. He was the seventh Osaka police officer to be arrested last year. The same month, Munefumi Yasunaga of Shizuoka prefectural police was arrested on charges of taking images up a teenage girl’s skirt in Fujieda Station. Yasunaga, a 36-year-old sergeant, admitted to the charges, Nippon TV reported. In September, Shinya Matsumoto was arrested on suspicion of stealing 10,000 yen in cash from the handbag of a 78-year-old woman who went to the Takehara police station in Hiroshima prefecture to renew her driving licence. An inspector with the Hokkaido force was arrested in July on suspicion of sexually assaulting an acquaintance at her home in Sapporo after drinking. In addition to the criminal cases, a number of incidents have highlighted incompetence in police ranks. In February, a patrol car of the Nagasaki prefectural police chased a car going well above the speed limit but, when they eventually got the vehicle to stop they found the driver was a colleague. The off-duty female officer, who was not named, had allegedly committed 13 violations of road laws, including running red lights. She had her pay cut for six months but resigned three months later. In May, a man being held in a police station in Kawasaki City on drugs charges simply walked out when the officer guarding him fell asleep. He was recaptured a short while later and senior officers promised to “work to prevent a recurrence of such an incident”.

Japan’s police face calls for overhaul as discipline cases hit 10-year high

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}National Police Agency figures showed that 337 personnel had to be disciplined last year, the highest in a decade

National Police Agency figures showed that 337 personnel had to be disciplined last year, the highest in a decade