page_title: Kenpeitai
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Kenpeitai / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Battle of Lake Khasan-A Soviet POW
context_page_description: The Kenpeitai was the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945. It was both a conventional military police and a secret police force. In Japanese-occupied territories, the kenpeitai also arrested or killed those who were suspected of being anti-Japanese. While it was institutionally part of the army, the Kenpeitai also discharged the functions of the military police for the Imperial Japanese Navy under the direction of the Admiralty Minister, those of the executive police under the direction of the Home Minister and those of the judicial police under the direction of the Justice Minister. A member of the corps was called a kenpei.
context_section_description: The Kenpeitai was established in 1881 by a decree called the Kenpei Ordinance (憲兵条例), figuratively "articles concerning gendarmes". Its model was the National Gendarmerie of France. Details of the Kenpeitai's military, executive, and judicial police functions were defined by the Kenpei Rei of 1898, which was 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 Kenpeitai'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 Kenpeitai was ordered to Korea where its main duty was legally defined as "preserving the 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 Kenpeitai 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, Tokkō, which was the Japanese acronym of Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu ("Special Higher Police") part of the Interior Ministry. However, the Kenpeitai had a Tokkō branch of its own, and through it discharged the functions of a secret police.
  When the Kenpeitai arrested a civilian under the direction of the Justice Minister, the arrested person was nominally subject to civilian judicial proceedings.
  The Kenpeitai's brutality was particularly notorious in Korea and the other occupied territories. The Kenpeitai were also abhorred in Japan's mainland as well, especially during World War II when Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, formerly the Commander of the Kenpeitai of the Japanese Army in Manchuria from 1935 to 1937, used the Kenpeitai 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 Kenpeitai 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 Kenpeitai 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 Kenpeitai recruited French Indochinese (especially, from among the Cao Dai religious sect), Malays and others. The Kenpeitai may have trained Trình Minh Thế, a Vietnamese nationalist and military leader.
  The Kenpeitai was disarmed and disbanded after the Japanese surrender in August 1945.
  Today, the post-war Self-Defense Forces' internal police is called Keimutai (警務隊). Each individual member is called Keimukan.
caption: A member of the Kenpeitai with a captured USSR soldier after the Battle of Lake Khasan
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