Wherever Japanese soldiers went on the Asian continent and in South Asia during the eight years that spanned the (hot) phase of the Asia-Pacific War, small bands of legal experts, so-called Legal Officers followed them. They formed the Legal Departments in the armies, fleets and units of the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy and their remit was to investigate, prosecute and judge crimes of soldiers and of civilians in occupied territories. Their ultimate purpose – as was the institution of military law and the judicial system in general - was predominantly strategic, namely to serve Japanese wartime goals through enforcing discipline of its soldiers as well as the cooperation of the “good civilians” in the local population. Military necessity thus was as much, or even more, important than considerations of procedural fairness or rule-of-law. However, depending on personal beliefs and inclinations of the Legal Officers, the wartime situation at the front and legal politics at the centre, practices of prosecution and adjudication could vary greatly.

This research project is intended as a twofold “biography”: More directly of the lives, careers and beliefs (if observable) of individual Legal Officers, their various roles – either as administrators and legal advisors at the army and navy Bureaus of Legal Affairs at the centre or as prosecutors and judges in the trenches – and their cases during the Asia-Pacific War as well as their transition and roles in the postwar years (if they survived). Chapters will focus on individual Legal Officers such as Ogawa Sekijirō, who went with the troops to Nanjing; Baba Tōsaku, who was an in influential administrator and legal advisor first and headed a Legal Department in Southeast Asia later; Hidaka Mineo, a prolific scholar of military law, who however was later tried and executed by the Allies for his role as legal officer in Singapore; or Ōyama Ayao, head of the Army Legal Affairs Bureau, who in the post-war years assisted the allies in their prosecution during the Tokyo Trial.

On a second level, the project also aims at an institutional “biography” of military courts and their practices during the Asia-Pacific War, as many of their personnel often remain faceless, did not have illustrious careers (or whose lives were cut short in the war, anyway) and did not leave personal reflections, but nonetheless had a tremendous impact on the lives of their fellow-soldiers (and civilians) through the legal practices of their departments and the decisions of their courts. Due to the overwhelming majority of numbers of courts-martial cases and the dire source situation regarding cases involving civilians, the study will focus on courts-martial practices (as a base line, as it were) and the standards they set for the permissible violence and breaches of discipline in their respective units.