Despite advances in facial recognition technology, the police in Osaka still rely on pure skill to find fugitives, with investigators using only their memory to arrest dozens of wanted criminals every year.
While other police forces in the world have "super recognizer" units that hunt down fugitives, the so-called miatari (look and hit) technique used in Osaka has contributed to the arrests of over 4,000 criminals in Japan since the Osaka Prefectural Police introduced it as a formal investigative method in November 1978. There has not been a single wrongful arrest.
"The best part of this method is being able to detect fugitives who are hard to find in normal investigations," said a senior investigator in Osaka.