O crepúsculo do sol nascente : medicina e extermínio no programa de guerra biológica do Japão imperial

Abstract

Between the 1930s and 1940s, the Imperial Japanese Army established a secret biological weapons program in occupied Manchuria under the cover of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department (Unit 731). This research analyzes the program's trajectory, investigating the transformation of science and medicine into tools of sovereignty and industrial extermination by the Japanese State. A qualitative and exploratory approach is adopted, based on bibliographic and documentary analysis, grounded in the concepts of biopolitics (Michel Foucault) and necropolitics (Achille Mbembe) to examine sovereign power over “disposable bodies”. The results demonstrate that Unit 731 was not an isolated ethical lapse, but a project of efficiency operated by the academic elite and protected by a complex structure of concealment. It identifies a pact of impunity between Japan and the United States: amnesty for the perpetrators was negotiated in exchange for exclusive access to human experimentation data. The study demystifies the scientific utility of the program, evidencing that it produced no legitimate advances, serving only as a technology of annihilation. It concludes that the post-war silencing of these crimes, consolidated by the Cold War pact of convenience and the subsequent projection of a pacified Japanese soft power, constituted a systematic project of erasure.