Teruko Nakazawa said she never wanted to be thanked or rewarded after decades of volunteering as an unpaid parole officer

Teruko Nakazawa once intervened in a knife fight between an ex-offender and their mother -- all in a day's unpaid work for sex 500anhem.net Japan's army of volunteer probation officers.

The 83-year-old, who jokes she is a "punk" as she puffs on a cigarette, devoted decades to supervising and helping rehabilitate convicted criminals on parole.

But she did not take a single yen for her hard work under a long-running but little-known state scheme that some say contributes to the nation's famously low crime rate.

Around 47,000 citizen volunteers known as "hogoshi" far outnumber the 1,000 salaried probation officers in Japan.

"I never wanted to be thanked or rewarded," said Nakazawa, recalling once going to save a boy "surrounded by 30, 40 bad guys".