Japan cop’s ‘qualification mania’ rooted in suicide response, desire to help others

TSUKIGATA, Hokkaido — Child counselor, disaster prevention specialist, positive psychology practice instructor, career counselor, marriage adviser — what do these roles have in common? For one police officer in this town in Japan’s northernmost prefecture, these are cards in his deck of qualifications.

Kenichi Odajima is described by himself and others as having “qualification mania.” At first glance, none of these roles seems to have any connection to his policing career. Yet, the 58-year-old officer had pivotal experiences that made him realize a police officer’s skills alone would not help, and led to his abundance of no fewer than 10 accreditations.

Odajima begins his days at Hokkaido Prefectural Police’s Tsukigata residential police box by studying. Opening the curtain at 4:30 a.m., he sits at his desk for the next two hours. From 6:30 a.m., he takes time to stretch, go for a walk, work out and have breakfast. Once his body and mind feel prepared, he readies for the work starting at 8:45 a.m.

“It never ends,” Odajima said with a wry smile about his daily studying for credentials. “Once you get one qualification, you want to know the background and causes behind it, how to solve problems, and it just leads to more, like falling dominos.”

Residential police boxes in Japan are generally in nonurban areas and staffed by a single officer who lives in a domicile attached to the office.

Among other things, Odajima is currently studying to become a mindfulness specialist to gain the knowledge and skills for self-actualization while keeping a calm mind. While his diverse qualifications seem inconsistent, they all relate to daily living, care for isolation, life, mental wounds and other inner workings of humankind that have to do with loss and recovery. The reason Odajima takes an interest in these topics lies within the areas he has been assigned to protect and serve.

The opportunity to stop would-be suicides

Since becoming an officer at the age of 22, Odajima has been transferred multiple times to regions with high rates of suicide. The first was a police box near a sheer cliff, and after that was a residential police box by a lake which was the site of numerous drowning suicides.

“I’ve seen cases of people who’ve died traumatized, and the unbearable suffering that their families go through. This has always been at the root of how I came to desire to save people, not just deal with their bodies,” Odajima explained.

Even without expert knowledge at the time, in some cases Odajima has been able to dissuade people from taking their own lives. One day, a very sickly pale-faced woman inquired about the location of a well-known nearby suicide cliff. There were bandages on her wrists, hiding scars from suicide attempts. Telling her there was no way he could help her go there, he spent two to three hours persuading her out of it.

On another occasion, a freezing man who had attempted to starve himself in the mountains during winter came seeking help at night, saying that he “couldn’t die.” Odajima immediately asked his wife to make some “onigiri” rice balls and prepared warm water for a foot bath.

However, he lacked confidence in his ability to help.

“At the time, I had felt that I was at my limit, but looking back, I wondered if I had offered words that resonated with the other person or responded in a way that they needed. I asked myself if I was able to properly be there for them and be of comfort and encouragement,” Odajima said.

After much self-questioning, Odajima resolved “to reach out to as many suffering people as possible,” and be of help as more than just a police officer.

He began studying in earnest around three years ago. While responding to a traffic accident on a day of heavy snowfall, he slipped, worsening his chronic back pain. As he was to be hospitalized and undergo three hernia surgeries, he told himself he could not waste the time and started studying with books.

The first qualification he earned was in child counseling. Having interacted with people struggling psychologically and economically, he sensed that children, being in the most vulnerable position, were the ones who bore the most damage. Next was accreditation for family therapy counseling, which aims to help those who are unsure how to deal with their children or significant others.

After that, he learned to be a disaster prevention officer, since some of those who had chosen to end their lives were motivated by the loss of family, homes or livelihoods due to disasters. He then trained for the marriage-hunting adviser certificate based on the belief that “isolation is pain.”

For all these certificates, he passed the tests on the first try.

Residential police box assignment began with a ‘thank you’

Odajima has one other obsession. Since being posted to work at a residential police box some 20 years ago, he has always wished to continue doing so. What led him to this choice was the experience of helping young children cross the road.

The line of children at a day care center took a full green light to get across. “This is dangerous,” he thought, and communicated with the person in charge of infrastructure at his regional police station, who then lengthened the green light by three seconds. Later, the nursery staff and others who noticed the change thanked Odajima, which made him happy.

In that moment, he discovered a new purpose in his work. “When you put effort into something, it can directly connect with residents’ sense of appreciation.”

“He’s amiable, and kind, and really a good person,” said 65-year-old Yoshihito Tsuzaka, the leader of the Tsukigata crime prevention association, praising Odajima’s work style. Since Odajima was posted to Tsukigata around seven years ago, Tsuzaka has heard about how he stops and salutes children on their way home from school or waves his hand. “He is very integrated into the community and works very hard. He’s a dedicated learner, and I tell him to stay here forever and not retire,” he said jokingly.

(Japanese original by Haruka Ito, Hokkaido News Department)