In spite of the barrage of public criticism that Japan's scandal-plagued police have recently been the target of, they may have found an unexpected ally abroad: El Salvador.

Mauricio Sandoval, head of El Salvador's national civilian police agency, is presently in Japan to learn from his counterparts here methods of improving the efficiency of El Salvador's police and how to make them more friendly and trustworthy in the eyes of the citizens.

Since arriving in Tokyo last Monday, Sandoval has met with top Japanese police officials, including Setsuo Tanaka, chief of the National Police Agency. During his 10-day visit, until Thursday, Sandoval will visit the traffic control center and other Metropolitan Police Department facilities.

But -- ironically -- efficiency, friendliness and trustworthiness are traits that many Japanese now believe their own country's police have lost, due to a recent spate of scandals, including the concealment of crimes committed by colleagues and misconduct by top officials at prefectural police headquarters.

El Salvador is at present pushing ahead with democratic and economic reforms following the end of a 13-year-long civil war in 1992.

El Salvadoran Foreign Minister Maria Brizuela also visited Tokyo last week for talks with Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, Foreign Minister Yohei Kono and other officials.

Obuchi and Kono praised El Salvador for attaining economic growth and promoting national reconciliation under the 1992 peace agreement and offered continued aid to support the Central American country's democratic and economic reforms.

Brizuela expressed her nation's appreciation for Japan's aid, including technical cooperation to improve the El Salvadoran civilian police. She told the Japanese leaders that her country hopes to attract more Japanese investment by improving security at home.

In the past decade, Latin American countries -- with the sole exception of Cuba -- have established democratic political systems after years of military dictatorships.

As part of its official development assistance, Japan has provided Latin American countries in recent years with technical cooperation to help them improve their police forces.

"Until the end of the 1980s, such assistance was impossible because police forces were widely regarded by ordinary citizens in many Latin American countries as a repressive machine of the military dictatorial governments," a senior government official said, requesting anonymity.

In Latin America, Japan places particular importance on its ties with El Salvador, which has emerged in recent years as a regional center of police cooperation among Central American countries.

El Salvador is the seat of the headquarters of the ICESPO, an organization to promote police cooperation among Central American countries to crack down on crimes such as drug trafficking, money laundering and illegal immigration. The ICESPO was established under a treaty signed in 1996 by Central American countries.

The International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol as the Paris-based body is better known, will also open its Central American office in El Salvador next month.

As part of its cooperation with the ICESPO, Japan dispatched three police officers to San Salvador recently to give a seminar aimed at teaching Central American police officers identification through fingerprinting and other scientific investigative methods.

El Salvador, which gained independence from Spain in 1821, was once called "a Japan in Central America" because of a number of similarities between the two nations. El Salvador has a relatively high level of population density; some 6 million people live in a country roughly equal in size to the Japanese island of Shikoku. El Salvador is also relatively poor in natural resources, but its people are widely considered to be diligent workers.

El Salvador is also regarded as a pro-Japan country. It became the first country to recognize Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet regime established in Manchuria, in 1932 before World War II. El Salvador even has a seaside town named "Atami," which it shares with the spa resort in Shizuoka Prefecture.

El Salvador has also set up six "koban" police boxes inside major parks in San Salvador. There are plans to set up more kobans across the country.

Sandoval will visit the Kabuki-cho koban in Shinjuku on Tuesday. Kabuki-cho is Japan's best-known red-light district.

Sandoval, who took office last June with the inauguration of President Francisco Flores's administration, is visiting Japan for the first time under the Foreign Ministry's invitation program for senior officials of foreign governments.

"Despite the strong public criticism, I believe the Japanese police are still one of the best in the world," a senior Foreign Ministry official said, asking that he not be named. "Many Japanese are probably all the more angry because they feel their confidence in police has been betrayed."

"I do not know, however, if Mr. Sandoval knows about the recent scandals involving the Japanese police," he added.