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Can Japan’s Self-Defense Forces legally open fire on a zombie horde?

Master Blaster Oct 31, 2026
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This legal discussion contains scenes of explicit violence and gore.

It’s Halloween again, and what better way to ring in the spookiest of holidays than with some thought exercises on complex constitutional law issues. Although most zombie stories focus on a ragtag group of civilians coping with civilization collapsing all around them, the beginning of the outbreak usually shows the military going all out in trying to eliminate the undead threat.

And with many of these movies and TV shows taking place in the USA, it’s no surprise to see the armed forces meeting the waves of zombies with guns blazing. In Japan, however, such a response is not so simple. While most countries’ militaries operate on a principle of “anything shy of a war crime is fair game,” Japan’s Self-Defense Forces operate in the opposite way and require very strict conditions before they can perform a certain action.

A good crash course in this can be found in our analysis on how the military can legally deal with a kaiju attack. Long story short, it is possible if Godzilla is classified as a “natural disaster” and the weapons used against him are classified as “tools” to neutralize the threat to Japan.

Zombies are much more complicated, however. Although certain aspects of the Godzilla scenario can be applied here, the fact that the threat is or was human introduces bigger legal hurdles for military and police forces. A video recently posted in the Legal Insight series by Tonari no Bengoshi Hosokyoku looks at this situation in-depth, but while their legal knowledge is spot-on, I’m concerned with some of their zombie awareness.

To start, much like with Godzilla, the SDF can be dispatched in a disaster relief capacity without issue. This means they can organize evacuations, set up barricades for shelters, and act in cases of self-defense to protect the public, just like police do. However, in this capacity, they cannot launch an assault on the zombies. One exception would be if the zombies were unleashed on Japan by a foreign government. This is the same reason that Godzilla cannot be considered an enemy combatant but King Ghidorah (sent by those jerks on Planet X) can.

So, let’s say our zombies are homegrown from some virus or mushrooms or something. Now, the question is whether they are people or not. According to Legal Insight, if they are classified as living people, then killing them can be considered murder, but even if they’re dead, filling them full of lead is also the crime of desecrating human remains.

However, Legal Insight also says that a zombie would be legally declared a corpse, and thus considered an “object” rather than a “person.” In this case, they could be treated in a way similar to wild animals that pose a threat to human life and be dealt with by the Self-Defense Forces using their guns as “tools,” much like with Godzilla. The desecration of a corpse charges would be outweighed by the need to protect lives, much like how scuttling an abandoned ship adrift in the ocean is deemed necessary despite the destruction of property involved.

But I think that’s where they got it wrong.

Despite all of our advances, humans are still not great at determining if something is alive or not. For legal purposes, however, Japan employs the “three signs of death” (shi no sanchoko) used by medical professionals: cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, and loss of brainstem reflexes. If all three of these conditions are present at the same time and irreversible, then that person is deemed deceased.

Legal Insight says that zombies do exhibit the three signs of death, but I beg to differ. This is a problematic claim because there have been so many different zombie stories with zombies of wildly varying abilities, but even despite that, I don’t think any of them even exhibits one of the three signs of death, let alone all three.

Starting with cardiac arrest, zombies bleed when shot and clearly have muscle function, either of which would be impossible a beating heart.

▼ Your Honor, if it pleases the court, I’d like to submit this gnarly video of Claire doming a couple zombies in Resident Evil 2 Remake. As you can clearly see from the blood spurting from their neckholes, they demonstrate arterial pressure which can only be achieved by a functioning heart.

And while they may not require it to function, zombies clearly breathe. How else do they make those “gnnnhhhurghhhh” noises? And brainstem reflexes? Baby, zombies are all about brainstem reflex.

▼ I’d now like to call Dr. Edwin Jenner of the CDC in the USA to the stand. He’ll explain to us that zombies have functioning brainstems beyond a shadow of a doubt.

So, whether it’s the ambling Night of the Living Dead zombies or your parkour-running 28 Days Later zombies, they are legally living humans and, as such, it could be argued that zombies would have rights in Japan. This means a cop or soldier cannot open fire on a zombie simply because they gave them a dirty look or even if they start walking towards them menacingly. The violence used against them must be in direct proportion to their own unlawful attack… which I guess means all soldiers can do is bite the zombies back.

So, in conclusion, the JSDF would be prohibited from gunning down zombies wholesale, and Japanese police would be legally obliged to arrest you for assault if one falls off the hood of your car while you drive away in a panic. That being said, in most zombie outbreaks the government seems to go down pretty quickly, and all laws just go out the window anyway.

Happy Halloween!

Source: YouTube/となりの弁護士放送局, Livedoor News, My Game News Flash
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