The Chinese Judiciary under the Japanese Occupation: Criminal and Civil Justice in Jiangsu, 1938–45

Abstract

Sitting at the intersection of Chinese legal-judicial history and the history of wartime occupation and collaboration, this study examines how Chinese judiciary functioned in Jiangsu under the Japanese occupation during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It finds that judicial institutions and procedures established prior to 1937 were carried forward, and the judicial system operated, and Chinese legal culture manifested itself, in a fashion similar to those in the prewar period. It argues that Chinese life under the occupation had multiple dimensions, and multiple shades in each dimension, including but not limited to: tremendous sufferings from the war destruction and the Japanese atrocities; actions of resistance and collaboration; and a majority of the population trying to survive and go about their lives as normally as possible. In the end, the continuity in the judicial field resulted from the interactive dynamics of the long-term effect of the judicial reform and the near-term impact of the Japanese occupation and Chinese collaboration.

Keywords:

• judicial reform
• wartime occupation
• collaboration
• civil justice
• criminal justice

Notes

1 Timothy Brook, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 12–13.

2 Baoshan Xian Dang'an Guan (Baoshan county archives), Anjuan (case files) 43-1-036.

3 For the Communist activities, see Zhang Xianwen, et al. Zhongguo Kangri Zhanzheng Shi, 1931–1945 (A history of China's war of resistance against Japan, 1931–1945) (Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 2001), 481–86. For the GMD presence, see discussions below.

4 Timothy Brook, “Collaborationist Nationalism in Occupied Wartime China,” in Timothy Brook and Andre Schmid, eds., Nation Work: Asian Elites and National Identities (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000), 159.

5 Besides references otherwise noted, the information on collaboration regimes in this paragraph and the following three paragraphs is largely based on Wang Jianlang and Zeng Jingzhong, Zhongguo Jindai Tongshi (A general history of modern China) (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2007), vol. 9: Kangri Zhanzheng (War of resistance against Japan) (1937–1945), 277–305.

6 John H. Boyle, China and Japan at War, 1937–1945: The Politics of Collaboration (Stanford University Press, 1972), 84–97.

7 As Timothy Brook discussed it in detail, the process of setting up an “occupation state” under the Japanese was to form the security maintenance committee, then the self-governing committee, and finally the public office under a higher-level puppet regime. The entire process involved many local players who were often not the elites in the prewar years, as the latter had means to escape from the occupied areas. See Timothy Brook, Collaboration.

8 For details about the establishment of the Reformed Government, see Timothy Brook, “The Creation of the Reformed Government in Central China, 1938,” in David P. Barrett and Larry N. Shyu, eds., Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932–1945: The Limits of Accommodation (Stanford University Press, 2001), 79–101.

9 For the Reformed Government's self-justification in terms of nationalist goals, see Timothy Brook, “Collaborationist Nationalism in Occupied Wartime China,” 170–85.

10 For details, see Lu Minghui, “The Inner Mongolian 'United Autonomous Government,” in Stephen MaKinnon, Diana Larry, and Ezra Vogel, eds., China at War: Regions of China, 1937–1945 (Stanford University Press, 2007), 148–74.

11 For a brief discussion of Wang's motivations in collaborating with the Japanese, see David P. Barrett, “The Wang Jingwei Regime, 1940–1945: Continuities and Disjuncture with Nationalist China,” in Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 112–15. For a more detailed treatment of the subject, see John H. Boyle, China and Japan at War, 238–55.

12 Minguo Zhiguan Nianbiao (A chronicle of the officialdom in the Republic of China) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1995), 691–95.

13 See Wenshi Ziliao (sources on history and culture) compiled by the local gazetteer offices of the said counties.

14 Ibid.

15 Timothy Brook, Collaboration, 229–30.

16 It is unclear who that “mayor” actually was or whether the reports reached the person. Historians Christian Henriot and Frederick Wakeman, Jr. accepted that Yu Hongjun, the last prewar mayor, continued to be the nominal “exile” mayor of Shanghai during the wartime (see The Shanghai Badlands: Wartime Terrorism and Urban Crime, 1937–1941 (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 8; 143, note 31). Chinese language secondary sources indicate, however, that after the war broke out in 1937, Yu was reappointed as the general manager of the Central Credit and Trust Bureau in Wuhan and was actually stationed in Hong Kong, and then became a deputy minister of the Finance Ministry in June 1941 (e.g., Minguo Renwu Dacidian (A comprehensive biographic dictionary of the Republic of China), 611; Xiandai Shanghai Dashiji (A chronicle of major events in modern Shanghai), 1058).

17 Baoshan Xian Dang'an Guan, 43-1-036; 43-1-037.

18 The most comprehensive English language secondary source on the topic of wartime assassinations in Shanghai is Frederick Wakeman, Jr., The Shanghai Badlands.

19 Dier Lishi Dang'an Guan (Second Historical Archives), ed., Guomin Zhengfu Zhengzhi Zhidu Dang'an Shiliao Xuanbian (Selected compilation of archival sources on the political system of the Nationalist Government), vol. ii (Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 1994), 385–92.

20 During 1938–40 the successive Ministers of Justice in Nanjing were Xu Xiuzhi (1939), Hu Rengtai (1938–40), Li Shengwu (1940–41), Zhao Yusong (1941–42), Luo Junqiang (1942–43), Zhang Yipeng (1943–44), Cheng Enpu (1944–45), and Wu Songgao (1945); and the heads of the Supreme Court were Zhu Luhe (1939–40), Chen Yinjiong (1940), and Zhang Tao (1940–45). In the Provisional Government in Beijing (1938–40), Dong Kang, the legal reformer and one-time Minister of Justice in the Beiyang era, was the Chair of the Judicial Commission, and Zhu Shen, the Nanjing-era Minister of Justice, was the Minister of the Legal System. See Liu Shoulin, et al. Minguo Zhiguan Nianbiao (A chronicle of the officialdom in the Republic of China) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1995), 1020, 1022, 1030, 1032, 1045–48.

21 Frederick Wakeman, Jr., The Shanghai Badlands, 117–19.

22 Xu Weizhen served as the president of the Provisional Court in the International Settlement in 1929–30 and then as the president of the Jiangsu High Court Second Branch, the applet court for the First Special District Court, in the International Settlement. He fell victim to kidnapping in March 1941 (see Wakeman, Shanghai Badlands, 118), and obviously survived it.

23 The Shanghai Municipal Archives, Quanzhong R45-1-1. The counties under the jurisdiction of the Shanghai High Court included Fengxian, Nanhui, Chuansha, Baoshan, Jiading, Songjiang, Jinshan, Qingpu, Chongming, Qidong, Nantong, and Haimen.

24 Tang Zhenchang, et al., Shanghai Shi (A history of Shanghai), (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1989), 824–30.

25 Under the Japanese direction, for instance, local apparatus of the collaboration regime in Baoshan and other places around Shanghai launched anti-British campaigns among Chinese residents in 1939. See Baoshan Xian Dang'an Guan, 43-1-037.

26 Wang Limin, Shanghai Fazhi Shi (A history of Shanghai local legal system), (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1998), 288.

27 For the GMD practices, see Xiaoqun Xu, Trial of Modernity: Judicial Reform in Early Twentieth Century China, 1901–1937 (Stanford University Press, 2008), 92–96.

28 See Baoshan Xian Dang'an Guan, 43-1-037.

29 Jiangsu Sheng Dang'an Guan, 1047-42-8.

30 Jiangsu Sheng Dang'an Guan, 1047-42-40.

31 Jiangsu Sheng Dang'an Guan, 1047-42-8.

32 Jiangsu Sheng Dang'an Guan, 1047-42-5.

33 For a recent monograph on moral education and thought reform in Chinese prisons in the first half of the twentieth century, see Ian Kiely, The Compelling Ideal: Thought Reform and the Prison in China, 1901–1956 (Yale University Press, 2014).

34 Jiangsu Sheng Dang'an Guan, 1047-42-7.

35 Jiangsu Sheng Dang'an Guan, 1047-42-49.

36 For a comparison with the prewar period, see Xu, Trial of Modernity.

37 See Timothy Brook, Collaboration.

38 Songjiang Xian Dang'an Guan (Songjiang county archives), Sifa Dang'an (judicial archives), Anjuan (case files), 4-2-251.

39 Songjiang Xian Dang'an Guan, 4-2-261.

40 Songjiang Xian Dang'an Guan, 4-2-223.

41 Xi Ping, et al., eds., Minguo Shehui Daguan (A comprehensive overview of the Republican society), (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1991), 285–86.

42 Shenbao (Shanghai News), 1930/9/28, p. 9; 1932/9/28, p. 7; 1933/3/16, p. 21.

43 See Baosan Xian Dang'an Guan, 43-1-036.

44 Songjiang Xian Dang'an Guan, 4-2-277.

45 Edward Slack, Opium, State, and Society (University of Hawaii, 2001), 87.

46 For the prewar period and the wartime, see Edward Slack, Opium, State, and Society, chs. 4 and 5; Alan Baumler, The Chinese and Opium under the Republic (SUNY, 2007), chs. 7 and 9. For the occupied territories during the wartime, see Timothy Brooks, “Opium and Collaboration in Central China, 1938–1940,” and Motohiro Kobayashi, “An Opium Tug-of-War: Japan versus the Wang Jingwei Regime,” in Timothy Brooks and B. T. Wakabayashi, eds., Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952 (UC, 2000), 323–59; other chapters in this edited volume are equally illuminating on various aspects of the opium phenomenon in China during the period covered by the book; For the extraordinary level of opium transactions and consumptions in the Japanese occupied regions including Shanghai, see Wakeman, The Shanghai Badlands, 12–13; also see Zhang Jun, “Wangwei Shiqi De Suowei Jingyan Gongzuo” (The so-called opium prohibition work in the Wang Jingwei collaboration period), Shanghai Wenshi Ziliao Cungao Huibian (A collection of unpublished manuscripts of sources on Shanghai's history and culture) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2011), 266–83.

47 Baoshan Xian Dang'an Guan, 43-1-036.

48 Songjiang Xian Dang'an Guan, 4-2-229.

49 Sichuansheng Yinye Shuiju Yuebao (Sichuan province excise tax bureau monthly), 1, no. 7 (December 1938), 31; 2, no. 3 (March 1939), 10.

50 See Xu, Trial of Modernity, ch. 10.

51 Songjiang Xian Dang'an Guan, 4-2-254.

52 Songjiang Xian Dang'an Guan, 4-2-294.

53 Songjiang Xian Dang'an Guan, 4-2-239.

54 Songjiang Xian Dang'an Guan, 4-2-245.

55 In January 1941 the Wang Jingwei's collaboration government in Nanjing issued the Central Savings Bank Tender to replace the old currency issued by the prewar National Government in 1935 (Jia Xiuyan and Lu Manping, Minguo Jiageshi (A history of prices in the Republic of China (Zhongguo wujia chubanshe, 1992), 275–76). The exchange rate between the new and the old currency was 1:2. According to the GMD intelligence report from Baoshan, however, due to the inflation, the old currency—legal tender (fabi)—was worth only 20 some percent of its prewar value in February 1940 (Banshan Xian Dang'an Guan, 43-1-037).

56 Songjiang Xian Dang'an Guan, 4-2-436.

57 Nanjing Guomin Zhengfu Sifa Xingzhengbu (Nanjing National Government Ministry of Judicial Administration), Minshi Xiguan Diaocha Baogaolu (A compilation of investigation reports on civil customs) (Zhongguo Zhengfa Daxue Chubanshe, 1997), vol. 1, 196–97, 220–21.

58 Songjiang Xian Dang'an Guan, 4-2-295.

59 These developments were described in Baoshan Xian Dang'an Guan, 43-1-037.

60 See Baoshan Xian Dang'an Guan, 43-1-037.