Abolition of the Special Higher Police (Tokkō)

The Tokko (Special Higher Police) originated in the Special Higher Section set up within the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on August 21, 1911 to tighten control of 'dangerous thought' after the High Treason Incident. After the March 15 Incident of 1928, special higher sections were established in every prefecture, forming a nationwide organization directed by the Home Ministry's Police Bureau; in June 1932 the Tokyo section was raised to a Special Higher Police Department. The Tokko enforced the Peace Preservation Law of 1925 and suppressed communists, labour activists, religious groups and political dissent of every kind; the writer Kobayashi Takiji died under its interrogation in 1933. Japanese sources state that about 75,681 people were sent to prosecutors under the law between 1925 and 1945 and about 1,697 died from torture, ill-treatment or illness in custody.

After the surrender the Tokko and the Peace Preservation Law at first remained in operation, and on September 26, 1945 the philosopher Miki Kiyoshi died in Toyotama Prison. GHQ viewed the Tokko as the primary instrument of thought control. On October 4, 1945 it issued SCAPIN-93, 'Removal of Restrictions on Political, Civil, and Religious Liberties' (the 'Human Rights Directive'), ordering free discussion of the emperor system, the abolition of the Peace Preservation Law, the Thought Criminals Protection and Surveillance Law and the rest of fifteen laws restricting freedom of thought, speech and assembly, the release of all political prisoners by October 10, the immediate abolition of the Special Higher Police, and the dismissal of the Home Minister and of all Tokko personnel.

The Higashikuni cabinet, judging that it could not carry out the directive, resigned on October 5, and it was implemented by the cabinet of Shidehara Kijuro. About 3,000 political prisoners were released, and the Peace Preservation Law was abolished by imperial ordinance on October 15, the Tokko apparatus being disbanded at the same time. According to Japanese sources there were then about 10,500 Tokko-related personnel, of whom 4,990 were dismissed in the form of 'voluntary retirement'; only 319, however, were later designated in the purge from public office, and many former Tokko officers subsequently returned to the police or entered politics.

On December 19, 1945 a Public Security Section was created in the Home Ministry's Police Bureau and security sections in the prefectural police, and the post-war security police are generally regarded as having inherited part of the Tokko's functions. The abolition of the Tokko and the Human Rights Directive are counted among the starting points of the early Occupation's democratization reforms; movements of victims of the Peace Preservation Law and their families seeking a state apology and compensation continue today.