National Police Agency (Japan)

The National Police Agency, known in Japan as Keisatsu-cho, is the central coordinating body of Japan's police system, established on 1 July 1954 in a postwar restructuring that replaced the country's earlier fragmented policing arrangements. Unlike the national police forces of many other countries, the agency maintains no general operational units of its own, apart from the Imperial Guard, and instead supervises Japan's 47 prefectural police departments, setting their general standards and policies through six regional police bureaus that oversee different areas of the country. In a national emergency or a large scale disaster, the agency can assume direct command of prefectural police operations, a power it does not otherwise exercise over day to day policing. It operates under the National Public Safety Commission within Japan's Cabinet Office, reflecting a deliberate postwar design intended to keep policing under civilian oversight rather than under a single centralized command.