As in other modern armies, discipline (gunki) was one of the core values of the Imperial Japanese Army, along with obedience, loyalty, bravery, order and simplicity. Discipline has a central function for modern armed forces: it ensures the authority of superiors and the obedience of subordinates. The latter includes not only the willingness to endure the physical and psychological hardships of everyday military life in war and peace, but also, in anthropological terms, the willingness to use force in response to an order and, in extreme cases, to kill people, while at the same time containing and controlling this use of force. It therefore has a mental as well as a physical dimension, it is inwardly directed within an individual and yet at the same time, as a pattern of action, it determines social behaviour, both within a group and against members of other groups. In this respect, military discipline has a strong influence on the military culture of a country.

In modern times, the introduction and enforcement of military discipline has generally gone hand in hand with other processes of social discipline and rationalisation, traditionally subsumed under the term modernisation. These took place in a wide variety of institutions such as schools, factories and hospitals, but above all in the military. Not least for this reason, the armed forces were seen by many as the 'school of the nation'. Military discipline and the norms associated with it gained social relevance through conscription and the incorporation of ever larger sections of the male population into the armed forces, where they were subject to it for at least part of their lives.

On the one hand, a country's military culture, and thus its discipline, was and is subject to processes of change over time. Secondly, as a norm it had different meanings and functions for different people: It varied between troop types and units, enlisted men were subject to it to a far greater extent than officers, and at all times there were those in the military who actively evaded it in whole or in part through insubordination, desertion, self-mutilation or even suicide. The Military Discipline and Insubordination subproject examines the history of discipline in the Imperial Japanese Army from the Meiji period to the end of the Asia-Pacific War. The analysis focuses on three key questions, each of which is examined in terms of continuities and discontinuities: First, how was military discipline understood during this period? Second, how and through what institutions was it taught? And third, how was it enforced against deviant behaviour?

The first key question aims to analyse the debates on the concept of discipline within the military, but also in society. The second asks about the institutional and substantive developments of military education, especially the so-called "spiritual education" (seishin kyōiku) as the "core" of ideological education within the army. The third question aims to analyse the handling of deviant behaviour within the army, especially through punishment, to find out what instruments were used to sanction insubordination and thus enforce discipline, but also to explore how effective discipline actually was in the Japanese army in the period between 1868 and 1945.

A wide range of sources will be used to answer these questions. These include, for example, memoranda, books and journal articles, parliamentary debates, laws and regulations, textbooks and manuals on discipline used in military training, but also reports and records on the punishment of soldiers, such as court martial judgements or files on disciplinary measures.