Various approaches in the study of the maltreatment of Prisoners of War (POWs), specifically the abuse of Japanese-kept POWs during the Pacific War (1941-1945), have been taken to explain the widespread abuse of enemy combatants at the hand of detaining powers including: government policies (primarily the exploitation of POW labor), logistical challenges, racial attitudes, and differences in (military) culture. Punishment, plays a role in all these fields, but far too often is relegated to a subordinate role in broader narratives of abuse, and deemed a side-effect of an already failing POW-treatment system.

Trying the Enemy provides an in-depth look at the mechanisms and legal texts through which the Imperial Japanese Army, and to some extent the Imperial Japanese Navy, sought to regulate POW camp life and maintain order among enemy combatants. It frames these efforts alongside developments in international law, as well as internal considerations related to logistics, operational activities, and ideological grounds of the Japanese military and governments.

Despite its critical role, punishment remains a significantly underexplored aspect of POW detention, as noted in the limited existing literature on the subject. Since the mid-19th century, belligerents have regulated what constitutes acceptable modes of punishment to limit the excesses that unfair and unjust reasons for punishment would bring about. This includes punishment that constitutes retaliation against enemy activities or the dehumanization of enemy combatants as objects of spite. Following the conclusion of the Hague Peace Conference in 1899 (specifically Convention (II) with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land) and its equivalent of 1907, POWs were formally put under the effect of the laws, rules, and regulations of the detaining power, and later in 1929 when the Second Geneva Convention (specifically the signing of Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.) came to a close, received formal universal protections in the form of 21 articles (45-67).

Over the course of Japan's imperial wars (First Sino-Japanese, Russo-Japanese, First World, and Asia-Pacific Wars) Japanese Army courts-martial (and to a minor extent Navy ones as well) prosecuted hundreds of enemy combatants over a number of crimes including bodily harm (to guards, but also toward other POWs), murder, theft, espionage, attempted escape, bodily harm against guards or other POWs, and the spreading of false rumors. The respective offenders were punished with short or long prison sentences, penal servitude, or the death sentence. However, little is known about the motives behind the implementation of criminal procedures and the reasoning behind laws that were created to target prisoners of war specifically. Trying the Enemy examines at courts-martial starting from the Russo-Japanese War until the end of the Second World War. It does trace the origins of the laws already to the First Sino-Japanese War, but little can be reconstructed as of yet about judicial penal procedures initiated against those soldiers. Instead, they called for disciplinary modes of punishment, which could be formal or informal. These modes mirrored the disciplinary punishments applied to Japanese soldiers, such as solitary confinement (formal) or the notorious shiteki seisai, which involved ad hoc punishments in the form of beatings or other more elaborate means.

Finally, one of the most well-known military legal procedures is the trials held against American airmen who participated in bombing raids on Japanese territories Having been particularly scrutinized in post-war war crimes trials, the fate of these men has colored legal procedures by the Japanese military legal system as arbitrary and violent. In general, however, trials and disciplinary punishments conducted against these soldiers have been largely neglected by the historiography of Japanese run POW camps, despite it being an essential part to daily camp life, and warfare at large. Hence, this project aims at reaching an understanding of the strategic use of punishment for military, operational, and strategic success.