The Battle of Kranji was the second stage of the Empire of Japan's plan for the invasion of Singapore during the Second World War. On 9 February 1942 the Imperial Japanese Army assaulted the north-western front of Singapore, capital of the Straits Settlements.

Their primary objective was to secure a second beachhead after their successful assault at Sarimbun Beach on 8 February, in order to breach the Jurong-Kranji defence line as part of their southward thrust towards the heart of Singapore City. Defending the shoreline between the Kranji River and the Johor–Singapore Causeway was the Australian 27th Brigade, led by Brigadier Duncan Maxwell, and one irregular company.

On 10 February the Japanese forces suffered their heaviest losses while moving up the Kranji River, which caused them to panic and nearly abort the operation. However, a series of miscommunications and withdrawals by Allied forces in the ensuing battles allowed the Japanese to swiftly gain strategic footholds, which eventually led to the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942.

The terrain around Kranji was primarily mangrove swamps and tropical forest intersected by streams and inlets. The shoreline between the Kranji River and the Johor–Singapore Causeway, nearly four kilometers long, was defended by Brigadier Maxwell'sAustralian 27th Brigade. The 27th Infantry Brigade consisted of three battalions—the 2/30th, 2/29th, and 2/26th—and was supported by the 2/10th Field Artillery Regiment, as well as one platoon from the 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion.

They were supported by one company from Dalforce (named after its commander, Lieutenant-Colonel John Dalley of the Malayan Police Special Branch), a local Chinese militia consisting of Communists, Nationalist supporters, and other volunteers. As the war intensified, the Dalforce volunteers were given only three to four days of training and sent to the war front with elementary weapons. Lacking uniforms, the volunteers improvised by wearing a red triangle on their blue shirts to avoid being mistaken for Japanese by the Australians.

The Allied forces at Kranji were to be assaulted by the Imperial Guards Division led by Major General Takuma Nishimura. 400 Imperial Guards had landed and taken Pulau Ubin, an island in the north-east of Singapore, in a feint attack on 7 February, where they encountered minimal resistance.

On 9 February, two divisions of the IJA Twenty Fifth Army, led by Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita, landed on the northwestern coast of Singapore, in the Sarimbun area, where the Battle of Sarimbun Beach took place between predominantly Australian and Japanese troops. Yamashita's headquarters (HQ) was located at the Sultan of Johor's palace at Istana Bukit Serene, which offered him and his subordinate officers a bird's-eye view of virtually every key (both military and civilian) target in the northern part of the main island of Singapore, just only 1.6 kilometres (one mile) across the Straits of Johor. Sultan Ibrahim's palace was not ordered to be fired upon by British artillery, even when it was clear that the invading Japanese forces had their headquarters there, because any damage caused to the palace would have extensive negative repercussions for ties between Johor's royalty and their British colonial counterparts.

The primary objective of the Japanese forces landing at Kranji was to capture Kranji Village, thus enabling them to repair the partially-destroyed Causeway in order to facilitate the easy flow of reinforcements and supplies down the roads of Woodlands and Mandai, and to the rest of the island for their vanguard force. Once the leading wave of Japanese was safely ashore, the massed Japanese artillery switched their fire to the defensive positions at Kranji. Telegraph and telephone communications were destroyed in the bombardment and communications between the front line and command HQ were broken. At 8:30pm that night, the men of the Imperial Guards Division began the crossing from Johor in special armoured landing-crafts, collapsible boats and by swimming.