Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Public Security Bureau



The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Public Security Bureau (警視庁公安部) is a bureau of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department in charge of public security with jurisdiction over Tokyo metropolis. It has a force of more than 2,000 officers.

In the Japanese police organization, only the Metropolitan Police Department becomes "the bureau" where the security police branch becomes independent. In other prefectural police forces, the Public Security Section and Foreign Affairs Division are installed in a Security Department. Tokyo is seen as an exception since it had been working with the Japanese National Police Agency for the longest time since they share the same location.

The PSB is not a Japanese version of Federal Bureau of Investigation, despite some claims that it is. It does not concern with ordinary criminal activities. It main focus is activities which threaten national security and therefore, the purpose is much similar to MI5. However, unlike MI5, it is operated entirely by police officers.

PSB cases

 * The PSB had been mobilized to investigate all Aum Shinrikyo facilities after the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Following the discovery of an Aum cultist who had been employed by the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces after sensitive military information had been leaked out, the PSB had investigated the matter. The PSB had been the leading agency to investigate reports that Aum Shinrikyo had acquired names of 3,000 Honda executives and sensitive data from government ministries and other important facilities via Aum-created software.


 * An ex-Japanese Air Self-Defense Forces warrant officer had been investigated by the PSB for divulging military secrets under the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement to a Russian GRU operative, who was identified as Aleksei Shchelkonogov.


 * Three activists of the Tachikawa Jieitai Kanshi Tentomura had been said to be prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International when they had arrested by police with the PSB investigating them for conducting anti-war activities after illegally entering an SDF housing complex in Tachikawa.


 * PSB agents had been involved in the arrest of former Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office official Toshihiko Shimizu, accused of providing classified data to a Russian embassy official, supposedly posing as a diplomat, under the National Public Service Law.


 * The PSB had failed in securing a Russian man wanted for spying in Japanese territory as a suspected agent of the SVR since the 1960s when he left Japan in 1995 and reentered the country several times before being unaccounted for when the spy used a Japanese name to obtain a Japanese passport in Vienna.

Scandal
After a discovery of sophisticated radios by police during a raid on a JRCL Revolutionary Marxist Faction safehouse on April 10, 1998, PSB officials had reorganized their communications network to better safeguard it against unwanted intrusions.

Known heads of PSB

 * Shigeo Ito
 * Masuo Okamura