Японские полицейские участки Кобан

Japanese neighborhood police station

A kōban (交番) is a small neighborhood police station found in Japan. The term also refers to the smallest organizational unit in a modern Japanese Prefectural police department. Small kōban buildings, staffed by uniformed officers at around 6,000 locations all over the country, are the bases for community policing activities which complement the work of larger, central police stations. Although often translated into English as "police box", kōban bear little resemblance to the police boxes formerly found in the UK or the police call boxes formerly found in the US, as they are larger and more permanent structures than both police boxes and call boxes.

A kōban is typically a one or two story building with a couple of rooms (although there is wide variation), staffed by a few police officers belonging to the community police affairs section (地域課) of a police station (警察署). Many kōban have signs reading KOBAN in Latin script.

The name kōban derives from the name of the earliest structure built in 1874, which were simple boxes meant for standing watch (立番) in rotation (交替), thus creating a compound word consisting of kō (交) and ban (番). Soon after, in 1881, kōban were transformed into local community stations with as many as six officers and a new official name hashutsujo (派出所) was given to it — although its common name, "kōban" survived. "Kōban" was further systematized and spread out nationwide, playing an important role in the Japanese police system over decades. In 1994, the official name hashutsujo was changed back to kōban. In 2017, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has been posting officers in kōbans who speak more than one language to help tourists and foreign expats, using the Kabukicho Kōban in Shinjuku and the Shibuya Ekimae Kōban. In 2019, the NPA ordered a risk assessment following a series of attacks on kōban officers. In one case in 2019, a lone officer stationed inside a kōban in Suita was attacked and his sidearm stolen.

Small police stations similar to the Japanese kōban can also be found in Singapore, where they are known as neighbourhood police posts. Additionally, the kōban system has become popular with international police training and assistance programs, particularly those of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). JICA has helped to establish kōban style community policing programs in several countries, including Indonesia, Brazil, and Honduras. In 2016, a kōban was built by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) at The Grove Mall in Los Angeles, California, USA; the LAPD also operates a kōban in the Little Tokyo neighborhood.