The Kenpeitai were definitely considered more prestigious than most ordinary army roles. Until January 1942, they only accepted internal applications from other army branches, and heavily scrutinized applicants for their past background. Once accepted into the Kenpeitai, candidates were trained at smaller camps from 1899-1942. After opening up to civilian applications, kenpei were trained at their own dedicated academy.

There were technically no educational requirements to join kenpeitai, but by the Second World War almost all kenpei had an elementary school education at least. The graduation rate from training camp was 10%, highlighting the rigorous training candidates went through.

For being part of the Kenpeitai, soldiers received higher pay, about ¥50.50 per month in 1929. This was at least ¥7.50 higher than the average soldier, but could be considerably higher. For reference, that year, elementary school teachers were paid ¥46 per month.

Kenpei has higher prestige than the military police of other countries because they were arguably the worlds first dedicated population control and counterinsurgency force. Founded after the Japanese acquisition of Taiwan, they were meant not only to discipline the army but were tasked with supervising campaigns against insurgents. In 1907, the Japanese government issued Edict 323, granting Japan permission to police a still (nominally) independent Korea. The Kenpeitai initiated a now obscure campaign known as the “Massive Subjugation of South Korea”, which demonstrated both their capability and their brutality. Fighting guerillas aligned with the Eulmi Righteous Army, a few hundred kenpei supervised maneuvers by thousands of Japanese soldiers. Losing 100 troops between 1907 and 1910, the Japanese claimed to have killed 140,000 enemy insurgents. This is an impossibly high number and an impossibly high kill to death ratio, especially since the maximum number of Righteous Army fighters was no greater than 30,000 throughout their entire existence. What this means is that the kenpei directed campaign was a wholesale massacre of civilians, who were then labeled “insurgents”. While brutal, the campaign was effective. The Eulmi Righteous Army and Korean insurgent activities in general largely ceased by 1910.

Kenpei could transfer to other branches, and it often was a good career move. At least two kenpei transferred to the navy throughout the force’s existence and rose to Rear Admiral.

Resentment against the Kenpeitai likely existed, but for obvious reasons was not vocalized. However, kenpei weren’t strictly non combat. While supposed to carry only pistols and/or katanas, kenpei did pick up machine guns in the 1932 Shanghai Incident and enter the fight. They could fight when needed- that just was not their main job. Further, kenpei by the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War were not as widespread as often portrayed or assumed. Due to the high failure rate in training camp, increasing swaths of colonial territory, and the need to request an internal transfer to join, there was a perpetual shortage of kenpei after the 1937 Battle of Shanghai, something that was only partly remedies by the Jan 1942 admissions reform.

The Tokkeitai also had a brutal reputation, but they were not as notorious or widespread because of their limited role. The Tokkeitai were a more conventional military police. Whereas the kenpei were involved in population control and internal suppression, the Tokkeitai were dedicated to order in the rank and file. Next, “Seishin Kyokyu”, or Spiritual Training, was far more an emphasis in the army than the navy. Part of the reason the fanatical kenpei were so feared in the army, especially after the early 30s, was their need to enforce a cult like atmosphere of “fighting spirit”. In Japanese military doctrine at the time, fighting spirit was an almost spiritual power that was thought to be able to overcome all odds and even fix broken artillery. Also in the prevailing military thought, frequent beatings and punishment enhanced fighting spirit.

As for whether rank and file soldiers were disgusted with the Kenpeitai’s brutality, on the whole they weren’t. There were some IJA soldiers who were absolutely horrified by what they saw during the war and campaigned afterwards for recognition of war crimes, but the great majority went along with them. By this, I do not simply mean passive acceptance of others committing war crimes, but active participation. This was at least somewhat in contrast to the relative non-participation of regular German soldiers in the activities of units like the Einsatzgruppen, at least in relativity. During the war, the units of the Imperial Japanese Army were more or less universally brutal regardless of specialization and location. Before 1937, the Kenpeitai ironically had a leading role in containing these atrocities.

The Imperial Army arguably always had a “vicious streak” which the kenpei only briefly contained between 1905 and 1918. As early as 1894, long before the height of militarist propaganda in the 1930s, Japanese soldiers massacres thousands of Chinese civilians and captives alike at Lushun/Port Arthur. The Western press reaction was negative, and this prevented Japan from being able to renegotiate its unequal treaties with the US. In the subsequent decades, the Kenpeitai were actually a restraining force on army regulars. To prove they were “civilized” “like the West”, the government had the Kenpeitai hire “regimental wives” (prostitutes) to keep the army from raping during the Boxer Rebellion. The kenpei also strictly disciplined anyone who was abusing civilians.

Ironically, Western troops ended up being no less savage than the Japanese at Lushun during the Boxer Rebellion, raping and murdering at will. This gave the Japanese a relatively clean image in Western press. This encouraged the Japanese government to pursue a strategy of avoiding atrocities for PR reasons, and the Kenpeitai continued being the army’s “leash” until 1919, midway through the Siberian Intervention. It is not exactly clear why the cabinet unleashed the army on the Siberian populace (they obviously did not publicize the policy change), but some Japanese historians speculate the failure of the Racial Equality Proposal at the Paris Peace Conference convinced the aggressive PM Terauchi that there was no point in appeasing the West to achieve equality.

By the end of the Second World War, nearly regiment of the Japanese army deployed abroad had committed some kind of war crime. Hardening back to the fetishization of “killing blows” in samurai fencing, soldiers in China were trained to bayonet civilians in order to develop a (literal) killer instinct. In the Battle of Shanghai, two 2nd Lieutenants challenged each other to a contest to kill 100 enemies with a katana first. A rematch to 150 kills was required, as both contestants lost track. Several Japanese newspapers praised the event, while one of the Lieutenants humbly bragged upon returning home, “I was often praised for killing 100 people [...] but actually, it was no big deal”. In this environment, the brutality of the kenpei was little different than that of ordinary units.