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- Convenor:
-
Urs Matthias Zachmann
(Freie Universität Berlin)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Danny Orbach
(Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- History
- Location:
- Lokaal 1.12
- Sessions:
- Friday 18 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
Did the Japanese military justice system contribute to violence against civilians in the Second Sino-Japanese War? This panel analyses the attitudes and role of various actors within this system and their indifference towards the Chinese population between 1937 and 1945.
Long Abstract:
The Second Sino-Japanese War can be seen as paradigmatic for the tension between two global tendencies in modern warfare. On the one hand, the establishment of the international law of war (ius in bello) attempted to restrain the practice of military conduct in battle and during occupation. Subsequent treaties like the Geneva and Hague Conventions aimed at protecting the life of combatants and non-combatants as well as to safeguard the life, property, and rights of persons who fall into the hands of the enemy. On the other hand, the theory and practice of total war can be characterized by the disregard of those evolving norms and the refusal to accept a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Instead of protecting the population of an enemy country, civilians were (and still are) considered a legitimate target of warfare.
While Japan was considered a role model of civilized military conduct at the turn of the 20th century, its warfare in Asia from 1937 onwards was seen as particularly barbaric, brutal and with little regard for civilian lives. The proposed panel aims to analyse this conduct during the war in China regarding civilians from the perspective of military justice. It addresses debates on the obligation to protect non-combatants and examines measures implemented to regulate and constrain the behaviour of soldiers in this respect. It also explores judicial practices imposed over civilians in view of the tensions between the necessity of both pacifying and controlling them in occupied territory. Ultimately, it reflects on the attitudes which different actors of the Japanese military justice system, e.g., commanders and courts-martial, the infamous kenpei and international lawyers, had towards the burden that civilians seemingly placed on the military during the war and asks what role these actors played in the relative indifference to the lives, property, and rights of civilians.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 18 August, 2023, -Urs Matthias Zachmann (Freie Universität Berlin)
Paper short abstract:
Did Japanese legal experts contribute to the escalation of violence against Chinese civilians in the Second Sino-Japanese War? This paper looks at the theories of Japanese international lawyers and their application by Legal Officers with regard to their impact on non-combatants in China.
Paper long abstract:
Unlike the Pacific War, the Second Sino-Japanese War for its longer part (until 1942) was an undeclared war. Considerations of law, logistics and ideology stood against declaring this conflict openly. And yet, it was the deadliest of all, and more fiercely fought than any other war that Japan conducted until 1945.
This paper proposes to explain how experts at the centre, especially international lawyers in Tokyo, squared the realities of war with the norms of their profession and the claim that Japan was, as always, the (only) civilized nation in the Far East that meticulously met its wartime obligations under the banner of international law. To do so, Japanese international lawyers in their publications and also internally in their advice to various ministries extolled the concept of a “factual war” (jitsu-jō sensō) that seemingly diverged little from an openly declared proper war. However, the litmus test always was how Chinese civilians fared in this “factual war”, under the conditions of total warfare and new technologies of annihilation. This paper explores how international lawyers took the massive aerial bombings of Chinese cities as occasion to redefine the role of non-combatants in modern warfare and, indirectly criticize the Japanese army for its tendency to wage total war against the Chinese population. Others desperately tried to avoid the concept of total war by trying to subsume contrary occurrences under the accustomed laws, with diminishing plausibility and professional integrity.
In a second step, this paper asks how these theories were put into practice by legal experts at the front. Based on field diaries, it particularly looks at how Legal Officers (hōmukan) who were active in China responded to the new concept of “factual war” in their daily work and how this affected the protection of civilians at the front and in occupied areas. Thus the overarching question of this paper is whether new developments in the theory and practice of Japanese law experts helped to contain, or actually condoned and contributed to the escalation of violence against civilians during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Tino Schoelz
Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses the increase of crimes committed by Japanese soldiers after 1937, the reasons for the failure of disciplinary measures and therefore the everyday radicalization of warfare against civilians.
Paper long abstract:
With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Imperial Japanese Army experienced a sharp increase in crime. This concerned both crimes within the military, such as desertion, insubordination, violence against superiors or property crimes like embezzlement, as well as crimes against the civilian population in Japan and the occupied territories, such as theft, looting, sexual violence against women or murder. In addition to systematic war crimes such as the scorched earth policy in Northern China, the strategic bombardments of cities or the development and use of bacteriological and chemical weapons, the increase in crimes contributed on an everyday level to the radicalization and brutalization of Japanese warfare in the Asia-Pacific War.
In contrast to the systematic war crimes, the high crime rate was considered, both by the army leadership in Tōkyō and by people in charge on the ground, as a problem that endangered Japan’s war aims as well as the functioning and reputation of the Imperial military. Yet, the protection of the Chinese civilian population was not a priority. Various measures, like the tightening of the Army Penal Code, the strengthening of the role and investigative powers of the gendarmerie or a closer surveillance of commanders as well as people considered to be potential criminals, were introduced to combat crimes committed by ordinary soldiers. The proposed paper asks firstly, how the increase in crimes was discussed by different agents within the military bureaucracy, discusses secondly the various measures taken by the army to tackle it, and analyses thirdly why the countermeasures ultimately failed to achieve the self-imposed goals. It thus contributes to answering the question of why the protection of the lives and property of the civilian population, in contrast to earlier military conflicts, played only a marginal role in establishing boundaries for the conduct of the Imperial Japanese Army after 1937.
Kelly Maddox
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of Japanese military practice in regard to the pacification of civilians by examining the judicial powers of the kenpeitai in occupied China.
Paper long abstract:
In the opening months of war with China in 1937, Japanese forces imposed martial law (gunritsu), enforced by the kenpeitai, and created field military commissions (gunritsu kaigi) to punish civilians who violated its provisions in all occupied areas. This justice system was an important instrument of military power which played a significant role in the maintenance of public order through both the control and pacification of civilian populations during the Asia-Pacific War (1937-1945). This paper examines one vital component of this system. Namely, the infamous kenpeitai who, in their capacity as a gendarmerie, were the first point of contact and an important intermediary between civilians and the military justice system in occupied territories. Entrusted with both law enforcement duties and judicial powers, the role of the kenpeitai in the pacification of civilians was extremely important. In fact, according to the Field Kenpei Handbook (Yasen Kenpei Hikkei), their authority in the maintenance of public order was vast and, both in name and reality, these officers wielded power over life and death. While analysis of this role can offer crucial insights into Japanese military policy and practice as it pertained to the handling of civilians under wartime occupation, it has largely been overlooked in existing studies which have tended to focus more on describing the war crimes committed by this unit or on detailing the repressive policing practices adopted in Japan and its colonies. Using official documents, including regulations, orders and instructions issued by senior commanders, as well as handbooks, reference collections and training manuals, complemented where possible by kenpeitai memoirs and collective accounts, this paper gives a detailed overview of this unit’s judicial functions as related to the control and pacification of civilians in occupied areas of China between 1937 and 1945. By exploring a relatively overlooked facet of the kenpeitai’s duties in occupied China, this paper aims to provide critical contextualisation of this unit’s infamous wartime conduct and, thereby, contribute to a more nuanced understanding of their role in the (mis)treatment of civilians during the Asia-Pacific War.