Former Home Ministry Site (Central Government Building No. 2)

The Ministry of Home Affairs (内務省, Naimu-shō) was established on November 10, 1873 (Meiji 6) by Ōkubo Toshimichi as part of the Meiji government's centralization of state power. From its inception, it became the most formidable ministry in the Japanese government, earning the sobriquet "the ministry of ministries" (官庁の中の官庁) and "the stronghold of the bureaucratic clique" (官僚勢力の牙城). Its authority encompassed police affairs, local government supervision, Shinto shrine administration, public health, civil engineering, and later, censorship, thought control, and civil defense.

KASUMIGASEKI HEADQUARTERS

The ministry's original building in Ōtemachi was destroyed in the Great Kantō Earthquake of September 1, 1923. As part of the massive reconstruction of the Kasumigaseki government district during the early Shōwa period, a new reinforced-concrete Home Ministry headquarters was completed in 1933 (Shōwa 8) at the current address of Kasumigaseki 2-1-2, Chiyoda Ward. This building served as the ministry's headquarters through the end of World War II.

WARTIME DOMESTIC CONTROL

During the wartime period (1937–1945), the Home Ministry became the central apparatus of domestic control and wartime mobilization:

1. Special Higher Police (特別高等警察, Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu / Tokkō): Operating under the Home Ministry's Police Bureau (警保局), the Tokkō functioned as Japan's secret police. It enforced the Peace Preservation Law (治安維持法, Chian Iji Hō, enacted 1925, strengthened 1928 and 1941) to suppress communists, socialists, liberals, pacifists, and religious dissenters. The Tokkō maintained surveillance networks across the nation, conducted interrogations, and was responsible for the deaths of numerous political prisoners including the prominent writer Kobayashi Takiji in 1933.

2. Air Defense General Headquarters (防空総本部): In 1943, the Home Ministry's Air Defense Bureau was elevated to the Air Defense General Headquarters, tasked with coordinating all civilian air-raid preparedness, shelter construction, firefighting mobilization, and evacuation planning across Japan. As B-29 firebombing devastated Japanese cities from late 1944, this organization bore responsibility for the woefully inadequate civilian defense measures that contributed to over 300,000 civilian deaths in the strategic bombing campaign.

3. National Spiritual Mobilization Movement (国民精神総動員運動): From 1937, the Home Ministry played a central role in organizing and supervising mass mobilization campaigns to channel civilian patriotism and sacrifice toward the war effort.

4. Tonarigumi System (隣組): The Home Ministry administered the neighborhood association system that served as the finest-grained instrument of social control, monitoring residents, distributing rations, organizing firefighting brigades, and reporting suspicious activities.

5. Censorship and Media Control: Through the Police Bureau's Censorship Section and the Publications Section, the Home Ministry exercised comprehensive control over publications, films, and public discourse, suppressing any content deemed harmful to public order or the war effort.

6. National Requisition (国民徴用): The ministry coordinated the mobilization of civilian labor for wartime production, including the conscription of students and women into factory work.

DISSOLUTION IN 1947

Following Japan's defeat in August 1945, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) identified the Home Ministry as a primary instrument of prewar and wartime authoritarianism. GHQ viewed the concentration of police power, censorship authority, thought control, and local government supervision within a single ministry as fundamentally incompatible with democratic governance. The Special Higher Police was abolished on October 4, 1945. On December 31, 1947 (Shōwa 22), the Home Ministry itself was formally dissolved, with its functions distributed among newly created agencies: the National Police Agency (警察庁), the Ministry of Construction (建設省), the Ministry of Home Affairs (自治省, later merged into the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications), the Public Safety Commission (公安委員会), and the National Election Management Commission.

THE SITE TODAY

The 1933 Home Ministry building continued in use after the ministry's dissolution, serving as office space for successor agencies. It became known as the "Personnel Authority Building" (人事院ビル) due to the National Personnel Authority's occupancy. The building was demolished circa 1998–2000 to make way for the new Central Government Building No. 2 (中央合同庁舎第2号館), a 21-story high-rise completed in 2007 that now houses the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (総務省), the National Police Agency (警察庁), the National Public Safety Commission, and the Public Security Intelligence Agency — virtually all direct bureaucratic descendants of the wartime Home Ministry. No monument or marker specifically commemorating the former Home Ministry exists at the site.