Kempeitai - History

History

The Kempeitai was established in 1881 by a decree called the Kempei Ordnance (憲兵条例?), literally "articles concerning gendarmes". Its model was the Gendarmerie of France. The details of the Kempeitai's military, executive and judicial police functions were defined by the Kempei Rei of 1898 which was subsequently amended twenty-six times before Japan's defeat in August 1945.

The force initially consisted of 349 men. The enforcement of the new conscription legislation was an important part of their duty, due to resistance from peasant families. The Kempeitai's general affairs branch was in charge of the force's policy, personnel management, internal discipline, as well as communication with the Ministries of the Admiralty, the Interior, and Justice. The operation branch was in charge of the distribution of military police units within the army, general public security and intelligence.

In 1907, the Kempeitai was ordered to Korea where its main duty was legally defined as "preserving the (Japanese army's) peace", although it also functioned as a military police for the Japanese army stationed there. This status remained basically unchanged after Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910.

The Kempeitai maintained public order within Japan under the direction of the Interior Minister, and in the occupied territories under the direction of the Minister of War. Japan also had a civilian secret police force, Tokko, which was the Japanese acronym of Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu ("Special Higher Police") part of the Interior Ministry. However, the Kempeitai had a Tokko branch of its own, and through it discharged the functions of a secret police.

When the Kempeitai arrested a civilian under the direction of the Justice Minister, the arrested person was nominally subject to civilian judicial proceedings.

The Kempeitai's brutality was particularly notorious in Korea and the other occupied territories. The Kempeitai were abhorred in Japan's mainland, too, especially during World War II when Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō, formerly the Commander of the Kempeitai of the Japanese Army in Manchuria from 1935 to 1937, used the Kempeitai extensively to make sure that everyone was loyal to the war.

According to United States Army TM-E 30-480, there were over 36,000 regular members of the Kempeitai at the end of the war; this did not include the many ethnic "auxiliaries". As many foreign territories fell under the Japanese military occupation during the 1930s and the early 1940s, the Kempeitai recruited a large number of locals in those territories. Taiwanese and Koreans were used extensively as auxiliaries to police the newly occupied territories in Southeast Asia, although the Kempeitai recruited French Indochinese (especially, from among the Cao Dai religious sect), Malays and others. The Kempeitai may have trained Trinh Minh The, a Vietnamese nationalist and military leader.

The Kempeitai was disarmed and disbanded after the Japanese surrender in August 1945.

Today, the post-war Self-Defense Forces' internal police is called Keimutai (See Japanese Self-Defense Forces). Each individual member is called Keimukan.