A 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. Since the 1990s, many of them have been equipped with signs reading KOBAN in Latin script. Overview A kōban is typically a one- or two-story building with a couple of rooms (although there is wide variation), staffed by one to ten (or more) police officers. The officers assigned to kōban belong to of . They are able to keep a general watch, respond to emergencies, give directions, and otherwise interact with citizens on a more intimate basis than would be the case if they were operating from a more distant station. 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. History The name kōban derives from the name of the earliest structure built in 1874, which were indeed simple boxes meant for , thus creating a compound word consisting of and . Soon after, in 1881, kōban were transformed into local community stations with as many as six officers and a new official name 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. One of the issues recognized in the last several years as most significant around the kōban system was the existence of . According to the National Police Agency (NPA), this issue was addressed and solved by 2007. 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 has ordered a risk assessment ever since a series of attacks on officers manning the kōbans, who were wounded or killed just to steal their issued items, usually their sidearms. This was in the wake of an attack on a lone officer stationed inside a kōban on June 16,