The Imperial Japanese Military Justice Organization

So a very interesting question came up in the facebook group I frequent.

Was there a difference between the Army Military police and the Kempeitai? 

Before we can go into the answer, we have to define what is the Army Military Police and the Kenpeitai. If we go to a direct translation, there really isn't any difference because the function of the Military Police and the Kenpeitai is the same between western world and the Japanese Empire.

But I'd like to use this opportunity to talk about the Justice system in the Imperial Japanese Military and a really rarely understood function of the Army Police. Called, 陸軍警守, Army police guard when they were organized under the justice division of the army, called 法務部. The justice division was a army civilian division headed by the Army head prosecutor.

Their function was to serve as assistant to Army prosecutors in apprehending, arresting, escorting suspects that are accused under the Army Martial Law. They are also assigned to assist an Army judge in his daily duties, and including to serve the Army Martial Court as bailiffs. They may also be assigned to assist Kenpeitai in their duties. Their arresting power comes from the martial court, as opposed to the Kenpeitai where it comes from the Army Command structure.

A specially appointed martial court may appoint current enlisted members of the army to act as temporary Army Police Guard with the same duties.

In Taisho 13, they renamed them from Army Police Guard to Army Police, called 陸軍警査.

How rare are they? Rare enough that I don't even have a picture lying around to show you how they looked like.

Under the regulations, they wear the same uniforms as other army enlisted men, except a few differences.

Their cap pipings are white, and their collar branch is white as well, even though they did not officially became a branch until Showa 17. Their shoulder board ranks are also white, with gold metal stars unlike other enlisted men.

They are authorized to carry swords much like other non-infantry branches as well.

However, one big difference is that they were treated as civilian employees. This brings us to discuss a little bit about the use of wordings in the original language. Even in the army you have people that are military, 武官, and people that are more government duties, 文官. The later are treated as other civilian employees of their respective ranks, and are actually translated into civilian employees a lot. This is also something that really gives me a hard time, as I don't know how to best translate the meaning as well.

Which means a lot of nuances, unfortunately, get lost in translation.

In Showa 17, the Justice division was changed to the Justice branch, as a full fledged branch. Their regulation did not change much, beside the use of chest branch colors instead.

And for the prosecutors, judges, they are collectively called Justice Officers, 法務官, they are treated as officers of their respective rank, and follow the regulation of officers, and like enlisted, the white pipings, branch colors.

Under the laws of the Japanese empire, all soldiers must be prosecuted under a martial court, which is the reason of the creation of the whole system.

And just as an aside, the Navy also has a similar system, but due to the reasons that the Navy does not have a dedicated military police branch, they assume most of the duties of the military police in the Navy as well.

The Army and Navy police also do investigations as well, depending on the severity of the case. A good comparison to the modern US military is the CID and the NCIS.

The only difference that there is no TV show about them that is, which is really a shame.