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.