“But I think KanColle goes well with Touhou.”
– ZUN¹⁾

“Touhou Police” (東方警察, Tōhō Keisatsu) was a term from the alleged tensions between Touhou Project and Kantai Collection in 2013,²⁾ which satirized the hypothetical dogmatic Touhou Project hardliners who scolded those jumping ship. It's a joke in Japan, but a self-critique in China.

In 2013, the sudden rise of Kantai Collection began to overshadow Touhou Project in the doujin scene. This did cause minor skirmishes like the 1draw Takeover in July³⁾ and one artist being hassled for considering to sell a Kantai Collection book with his Touhou Project books at “Touhou Taensai” (東方多宴祭), even though it was fine with the event organizer as long as a Touhou Project work was present.⁴⁾

But after “Daikyushu Touhou-sai 8” (大⑨州東方祭8), someone anonymously posted a list of Touhou Project artists who allegedly sold Kantai Collection works and claimed that the “Touhou Police” will have a more detailed list.⁵⁾ Somehow, this Hatelabo blog post spread to Twitter, where everyone just collectively made fun of the idea that a dogmatic group of hardliners would even exist.⁶⁾

During this, ZUN was headed to “Anime Weekend Atlanta 2013”, saw the uproar, then he left a few sardonic remarks⁷⁾⁸⁾ before promoting a more cooperative,⁹⁾ rational way of thinking.¹⁰⁾¹¹⁾ The event organizer also joined in to say that content creators should be free to make and sell whatever they want,¹²⁾ then this event's committee clarified that an “only event” requires you to have at least one Touhou Project work.¹³⁾¹⁴⁾

To close off the hectic week, we would see the term “Touhou Police” appear on a nationally televised weekly segment on popular Twitter trends for the week of September 22-28, 2013 where people also talked about Line adding video calls, Funassyi, the Bon Festival's end, Kazuhisa Ishii's retirement, etc.

As previously stated, most people made light of it:¹⁵⁾ cracking “Ostpolizei” jokes,¹⁶⁾ making merchandise,¹⁷⁾ setting up parody accounts, and so forth. However, the anti-Touhou trolls would not let it go. Someone at “Bunbunmaru Shinbun Tomo no Kai” (文々。新聞友の会)¹⁸⁾ randomly took the microphone, randomly shouted pro-KanColle remarks, promptly got booed off,¹⁹⁾ and simply got away without being identified.²⁰⁾

Some known Twitter troll²¹⁾ insisted the Touhou Police harassed the doujin circle “Carcharias”²²⁾²³⁾ when it turned out that they couldn't finish the manuscript on time,²⁴⁾ then “cis” later got caught up in a big lie. Then in 2014, a troll attended “Touhou Kouroumu 10” (東方紅楼夢10) with only Kantai Collection, but nothing happened, then the Koushinists doxed him for an unrelated matter.²⁵⁾²⁶⁾

Meanwhile on the Chinese internet, “Touhou Police” (东方警察, Dōngfāng Jǐngchá) is taken quite literally and it turns out that the people actually use the term to scold the dogmatic, elitist, anti-secondary rhetoric that often forms in the international Touhou Project fanbase. This might've been a result of said information being unavailable, and the THBWiki article mostly copying off a biased anti-Touhou source.²⁷⁾

By 2017, the Fate series had surpassed Touhou and KanColle, which just makes all of this drama look silly. Then on October 19, 2019, Touhou Garakuta published an interview with ZUN where he just casually puts down the elitist “true fans buy and play all the original games” argument by saying that you really don't need to play the original games to enjoy the fanworks.²⁸⁾²⁹⁾

• Despite what it seemed,³⁰⁾ the “Touhou Police” was never real, nor did they police doujin circles.
• At some point, somebody tried turning the term into an art tag for Touhou characters and police work, plus there was that self-proclaimed police officer in the PC-98 era by the name of Kotohime.
• If you're wondering why The Idolm@ster or Puella Magi Madoka Magica never faced a similar conflict being instigated with Touhou Project, you've figured out why the logic for this conflict fails.

• Touhou Is Dead

• Touhou Police on Niconico Encyclopedia

　　　　 ,r---､.　 　, ' ⌒' 、.
　　　_ソヽ／`､シi.（　.×.　!
　　　_>=ﾍ 山/=<　'､ __ , '
.　　（(ん'ﾉﾉﾙﾚﾑ)）/　　　This is a Touhou only event!
　　 _ｿﾚﾘ ｀ Дﾉﾘ/　　No Admirals or Producers allowed!
　　　),k'ｦ:::::::：:つ　
　　　 (ﾝ::::/:::l::ヽ　
　　　 ｀~i,ﾝT,ﾉ~´.