Koban 1

Forces of Order

In sharp contrast to the United States, Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and practically no police brutality or corruption. Urban congestion is often blamed for the soaring crime rate in the United States and the waning public confidence in the American police force, yet Japan's population per square mile is almost thirty times that of ours. In Forces of Order, originally published in 1976 and now thoroughly revised and expanded, David Bayley examines the reasons behind Japan's phenomenal success when it comes to public order. The Japanese police force is the world's most developed model of "community policing." To study it, Bayley conducted hundreds of interviews with police officers in Japan and spent many hours observing them on patrol, mostly at night. Making explicit comparisons between Japan and the United States, he analyzes Japan's record in policing and crime, the life of patrol officers, police relations with the community, police discipline and responsibility, the police as an institution, victimless crime, and deviance and authority in Japanese culture. The essential lesson of the book is that the incidence of crime as well as the nature of police practices is rooted in long-standing traditions that are profoundly related to fundamental matters of morality, culture, and historical experience. Bayley shows that the key differences between Japan and the United States do not stem from the economic or political structures of the two countries, but from the characteristic way in which people are expected to relate to one another and the sorts of social institutions that shape and reinforce those expectations.

Kaempfer's Japan

Engelbert Kaempfer's History of Japan was a best-seller from the moment it was published in London in 1727. Born in Westphalia in 1651, Kaempfer traveled throughout the Near and Far East before settling in Japan as physician to the trading settlement of the Dutch East India Company at Nagasaki. During his two years residence, he made two extensive trips around Japan in 1691 and 1692, collecting, according to the British historian Boxer, "an astonishing amount of valuable and accurate information." He also learned all he could from the few Japanese who came to Deshima for instruction in the European sciences. To these observations, Kaempfer added details he had gathered from a wide reading of travelers' accounts and the reports of previous trading delegations. The result was the first scholarly study of Tokugawa Japan in the West, a work that greatly influenced the European view of Japan throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, serving as a reference for a variety of works ranging from encyclopedias to the libretto of "The Mikado." Kaempfer's work remains one of the most valuable sources for historians of the Tokugawa period. The narrative describes what no Japanese was permitted to record (the details of the shogun's castle, for example) and what no Japanese thought worthy of recording (the minutiae of everyday life). However, all previous translations of the History are flawed, being based on the work of an eighteenth-century Swiss translator or that of the German editor some fifty years later who had little knowledge of Japan and resented Kaempfer's praise of the heathen country. Beatrice Bodart-Bailey's impressive new translation of this classic, which reflects careful study of Kaempfer's original manuscript, reclaims the work for the modern reader, placing it in the context of what is currently known about Tokugawa Japan and restoring the humor and freshness of Kaempfer's observations and impressions. In Kaempfer's Japan we have, for the first time, an accurate and thoroughly readable annotated translation of Kaempfer's colorful account of pre-modern Japan.

Money, Coins and Commerce