I want to live and work in Japan as a criminologist

7 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **I want to live and work in Japan as a criminologist**

   Hello! I live in Costa Rica I’m 20, and in about 2 years, I will finish my diploma in criminal investigation and my bachelor’s degree in criminology. I would like to find out in advance if there is any job opportunity in Japan for criminologists or criminal investigators, and what the procedure would be for me to follow (I am starting my research now in case the process takes a long time). It would even be good if I had to pursue a postgraduate degree in Japan to get a job, but I am lost on where to begin.

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2. Most police organizations in Japan require that you be a citizen in order to work for them. Whether it’s a direct requirement or the position requires that you’ve taken the civil servant exam (which only citizens can sit for).

   I can’t imagine there is great demand for criminal investigators in the private sector. Maybe in corporate security?

3. With just your degree it will be almost impossible to find work in that field.

   With N1 equivalent Japanese fluency and 5-10 years of experience you might find a very rare role at a foreign owned corporate in security.

   There will not be any government roles you can take except possibly embassy roles as security with foreign governments.

4. I think if you are interested in research you can also reach out to professors at universities to see about working on projects with them. But you would still need to get a visa from some other source.

5. I think that your best bet would be to get a PhD in criminology from a respected university in the United States or the United Kingdom and then try to find a job teaching criminology in English at one of the dozen or so Japanese universities that has a criminology program.

6. I mean, maaayyybe you could become a Private Investigator and do your own business, but to be honest I don’t think that would have all that high of a success rate. Maybe if you made a name for yourself in the US/whatever country your from and we’re recognized I guess? It would take an insane amount of luck and a lot of time, though.

   Unfortunately, as cool as Takeshi Kitano detective movies are, doing that job as someone who is not a Japanese citizen would be rather difficult. Language barrier aside, there just isn’t a lot of employment is that department. It’s hard to get into criminology in the US as a US born citizen who speaks native English, much less in a country where you don’t speak the language (I assume, apologies if not correct) and you don’t have citizenship/residence.

   Additionally, I would recommend not getting a grad degree in japan. I was thinking about doing it before my exchange term in japan, but if you can go to a US/UK/Good EU school I would 100% recommend that. Unless you can get into a really great international school, (which is a possibility for sure so I would look into that) then it’s better to go to a school in the states/uk/eu for grad school. Almost any school in the US is going to be more recognized than a private international school in japan, and definitely if it’s a state university. Just my two cents, as I had a desire to work in japan for a bit. Honestly, just take a trip there if you can afford it and see how you like it. You’ll save a lot of time and money if you end up deciding it’s not for you. And if you do enjoy it, then you can work towards something until there is a greater possibility for employment there.

7. Zero because most civil police type jobs require Citizenship. Even if it didnt your chances go from 0 to 0.1% because you dont speak native Japanese