In September 1939 the 1st Guards Brigade of the Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese Imperial Guards Division was split off and transferred to South China

Northern and southern China

Northern China and southern China are two approximate regions within China. The exact boundary between these two regions has never been precisely defined...

 to became known as the Guards Mixed Brigade. It took with it the 1st and 2nd Guards Infantry Regiments, the Guards Cavalry Regiment, and about half of the other support and service units. There it defended against the Chinese 1939-40 winter offensive and participated in the later part of the Battle of South Guangxi

Battle of South Guangxi

The Battle of South Guangxi , was one of the 22 major engagements between the National Revolutionary Army and Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War.In November 1939, the Japanese landed on the coast of Guangxi and captured Nanning...

.

In October 1940, the Guards Mixed Brigade joined other Japanese units occupying French Indochina

French Indochina

French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....

. In April 1941 it returned to Tokyo, but did not re-join the Imperial Guards Division.

In June 1943 the 1st Guards Division was formed from the Guards Mixed Brigade in Tokyo.