[Book Review] How to Re-evaluate the Home Ministry: Its Real Image Based on Historical Materials and Political Historical Issues

The Home Ministry, edited by the Home Ministry Research Group (Kodansha Gendai Shinsho), is an ambitious work that meticulously reconstructs the reality of the Home Ministry—a massive government agency essential for understanding the governance structure of modern Japan—based on primary historical sources. Discussions surrounding the Home Ministry often tend to prioritize its image as an apparatus of oppression for the pre-war state, but this book carefully interprets a diverse range of materials, including bureaucratic diaries, reports from local governors, Police Bureau documents, and post-war public office purge records, to depict the reality of the institution in three dimensions. I feel it is of a very high standard as foundational research in administrative and institutional history.
The strength of this book lies in its positioning of the Home Ministry not merely as a 'massive bureaucratic organization,' but within its interaction with political power. By considering the context of political history—such as the era of party-affiliated Home Ministers, the tense relationship with the military, and the strengthening of bureaucratic leadership under the wartime regime—it clearly demonstrates how the exercise of the Home Ministry's authority changed significantly over time. In particular, the book's great strength is its empirical depiction, based on historical materials, of how the Home Ministry, which handled local administration, police, election management, and social policy all at once, responded to the rise and fall of party politics and the emergence of the military.
Regarding the Peace Preservation Law regime and the Special Higher Police, the book calmly analyzes the process of institutional formation and the reality of their operation without falling into ideological condemnation. It presents perspectives that revise the conventional, simplified image of an 'oppressive agency,' such as the fact that the expansion of the Special Higher Police occurred not only due to the intentions of the Home Ministry but also amidst power struggles with the military and the Ministry of Justice, and that the operation of local police did not necessarily align with the intentions of the central government.
On the other hand, some questions remain. First, regarding the extent to which the Home Ministry's 'governance techniques' meshed with the realities of local society, there is an impression that the analysis is somewhat biased toward central historical materials. The practical work of local administration was operated within a multi-layered structure involving prefectural governors, police chiefs, and county offices, and I would have liked to see a more in-depth analysis of how far central intentions actually permeated the field. Second, while the analysis of the political process of the Home Ministry's dissolution during post-war reforms is brilliant in its cross-referencing of GHQ documents and Japanese-side materials, the institutional comparative perspective of 'why only the Home Ministry was dissolved' feels somewhat weak. A comparison with other ministries such as the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry would have added more persuasiveness.
Nevertheless, the significance of this book in meticulously depicting the reality of the Home Ministry based on primary sources is immense, and there is no doubt that it is a must-read for understanding the governance structure of pre-war Japan. As a study standing at the intersection of administrative, political, and institutional history, I feel it provides significant insights for both experts and general readers alike.