We periodically hear from nationalists about Japan's distinctiveness -- how "Japaneseness" is a matter of "race" and "blood," not citizenship or culture. This is usually disregarded as mere unscientific sentiment from fringe elements.
But not, it seems, by the National Police Agency. One of its branches, the National Research Institute of Police Science (NRIPS), in 2001 proposed a policy to create an "index" ("shihyou") of "foreignness" in its forensic crime science.
An attempt to monitor and foil allegedly rampant foreign crime, NRIPS claims it can test minute samples of blood and biota from crime scenes to determine whether the suspect is "foreign" or not.
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