Kempeitai

The Kempeitai (憲兵隊, Kenpeitai, "Military Police Corps") /kɛmpeɪtaɪ/ was the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945. It was not a conventional military police, but more of a secret police, akin to Nazi Germany's Gestapo.

While it was institutionally part of the Imperial Japanese Army, it also discharged the functions of the military police for the Imperial Japanese Navy under the direction of the Admiralty Minister (although the IJN had its own much smaller Tokkeitai), those of the executive police under the direction of the Interior Minister, and those of the judicial police under the direction of the Justice Minister. A member of the corps was called a kempei.

History

The Kempeitai was established in 1881 by a decree called the Kempei Ordinance (憲兵条例), figuratively "articles concerning gendarmes". Its model was the Gendarmerie of France. Details of the Kempeitai's military, executive, and judicial police functions were defined by the Kempei Rei of 1898, which was amended twenty-six times before Japan's defeat in August 1945.