This book assesses the historical significance of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE)--commonly called the Tokyo trial--established as the eastern counterpart of the Nuremberg trial in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Through extensive research in Japanese, American, Australian, and Indian archives, Yuma Totani taps into a large body of previously underexamined sources to explore some of the central misunderstandings and historiographical distortions that have persisted to the present day. Foregrounding these voluminous records, Totani disputes the notion that the trial was an exercise in "victors' justice" in which the legal process was egregiously compromised for political and ideological reasons; rather, the author details the achievements of the Allied prosecution teams in documenting war crimes and establishing the responsibility of the accused parties to show how the IMTFE represented a sound application of the legal principles established at Nuremberg. This study deepens our knowledge of the historical intricacies surrounding the Tokyo trial and advances our understanding of the Japanese conduct of war and occupation during World War II, the range of postwar debates on war guilt, and the relevance of the IMTFE to the continuing development of international humanitarian law.

Challenges the persistent orthodoxies of the Tokyo tribunal and provides a new framework for evaluating the trial, revealing its importance to international jurisprudence.

In the years since the Japanese war crimes trials concluded, the proceedings have been colored by charges of racism, vengeance, and guilt. In this book, Tim Maga contends that in the trials good law was practiced and evil did not go unpunished. The defendants ranged from lowly Japanese Imperial Army privates to former prime ministers. Since they did not represent a government for which genocide was a policy pursuit, their cases were more difficult to prosecute than those of Nazi war criminals. In contrast to Nuremberg, the efforts in Tokyo, Guam, and other locations throughout the Pacific received little attention by the Western press. Once the Cold War began, America needed Pacific allies and the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers throughout the 1930s and early 1940s were rarely mentioned. The trials were described as phony justice and "Japan bashing". Keenan and his compatriots adopted criminal court tactics and established precedents in the conduct of war crimes trials that still stand today. Maga reviews the context for the trials, recounts the proceedings, and concludes that they were, in fact, decent examples of American justice and fair play.

The klieg-lighted Tokyo Trial began on May 3, 1946, and ended on November 4, 1948, a majority of the eleven judges from the victorious Allies finding the twenty-five surviving defendants, Japanese military and state leaders, guilty of most, if not all, of the charges. As at Nuremberg, the charges included for the first time "crimes against peace" and "crimes against humanity," as well as conventional war crimes. In a polemical account, Richard Minear reviews the background, proceedings, and judgment of the Tokyo Trial from its Charter and simultaneous Nuremberg "precedent" to its effects today. Mr. Minear looks at the Trial from the aspects of international law, of legal process, and of history. With compelling force, he discusses the motives of the Nuremberg and Tokyo proponents, the Trial's prejudged course—its choice of judges, procedures, decisions, and omissions—General MacArthur's review of the verdict, the criticisms of the three dissenting judges, and the dangers inherent in such an international, political trial. His systematic, partisan treatment pulls together evidence American lawyers and liberals have long suspected, feared, and dismissed from their minds. Contents: Preface. I. Introduction. II. The Tokyo Trial. III. Problems of International Law. IV. Problems of Legal Process. V. Problems of History. VI. After the Trial. Appendices. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The book examines the process and the impact of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), otherwise known as the Tokyo Trial, which was convened in 1946 to try the Japanese leaders accused of committing war crimes during World War II. Offering valuable research materials, it studies the lessons learned from the failed attempt after World War I, and the background and establishment of the IMTFE. It elaborates on the Charter, the Indictment, the Proceeding Records, and the Judgment of the IMTFE, with an emphasis on principles of international law and other legal questions, often with reference to the Nuremberg Trial. It also discusses the structure and different parts of the court organization, the selection and prosecution of Class-A war criminals, and the trial procedures especially those relating to evidence. The author’s personal experience and his criticism of certain aspects of the Tokyo Trial make it most insightful for the reader. From the perspective of a Chinese judge, this unique text brings in the dimensions of both international law and international relations, and allows us to measure the significance and legacy of the Tokyo Trial for contemporary international criminal justice. The author’s manuscript of this book was written in Chinese in the mid-1960s as part of a larger project, and was initially published in 1988. This is the first time that this book has been translated into English.

The aim of this new collection of essays is to engage in analysis beyond the familiar victor’s justice critiques. The editors have drawn on authors from across the world — including Australia, Japan, China, France, Korea, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — with expertise in the fields of international humanitarian law, international criminal law, Japanese studies, modern Japanese history, and the use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The diverse backgrounds of the individual authors allow the editors to present essays which provide detailed and original analyses of the Tokyo Trial from legal, philosophical and historical perspectives. Several of the essays in the collection are based on the authors’ extensive archival research in Japan, Australia, the United States and New Zealand, providing rich insights into Japanese societal attitudes towards the Trial, biological experimentation by the Japanese Army in China, as well as the trial of Korean prison guards and prosecutions for rape and sexual assault in the post-war period. Some of the essays deal with particular participants in the Trial, examining the role of individual judges, and the selection of defendants and the decision not to prosecute the Emperor. Other essays analyse the Trial from a legal perspective, and address its impact on concepts such as command responsibility, conspiracy and war crimes. The majority of the essays seek to identify and address some of the ‘forgotten crimes’ in the Tokyo Trial. These include crimes committed in China and Korea (particularly the activities of the infamous Unit 731), crimes committed against comfort women, and crimes associated with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the conventional firebombing of other Japanese cities and the illicit drug trade in China. Finally, the collection includes a number of essays which consider the importance of studying the Tokyo Trial and its contemporary relevance. These issues include an examination of the way in which academics have ‘written’ the Trial over the last 60 years, and an analysis of some of the lessons that can be drawn for international trials in the future.

In the aftermath of World War II, the Allied intent to bring Axis crimes to light led to both the Nuremberg trials and their counterpart in Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East. Yet the Tokyo Trial failed to prosecute imperial Japanese leaders for the worst of war crimes: inhumane medical experimentation, including vivisection and open-air pathogen and chemical tests, which rivaled Nazi atrocities, as well as mass attacks using plague, anthrax, and cholera that killed thousands of Chinese civilians. In Hidden Atrocities, Jeanne Guillemin goes behind the scenes at the trial to reveal the American obstruction that denied justice to Japan’s victims. Responsibility for Japan’s secret germ-warfare program, organized as Unit 731 in Harbin, China, extended to top government leaders and many respected scientists, all of whom escaped indictment. Instead, motivated by early Cold War tensions, U.S. military intelligence in Tokyo insinuated itself into the Tokyo Trial by blocking prosecution access to key witnesses and then classifying incriminating documents. Washington decision makers, supported by the American occupation leader, General Douglas MacArthur, sought to acquire Japan’s biological-warfare expertise to gain an advantage over the Soviet Union, suspected of developing both biological and nuclear weapons. Ultimately, U.S. national-security goals left the victims of Unit 731 without vindication. Decades later, evidence of the Unit 731 atrocities still troubles relations between China and Japan. Guillemin’s vivid account of the cover-up at the Tokyo Trial shows how without guarantees of transparency, power politics can jeopardize international justice, with persistent consequences.

The ‘International Military Tribunal for the Far East’ (IMTFE), held in Tokyo from May 1946 to November 1948, was a landmark event in the development of modern international criminal law. The trial in Tokyo was a complex undertaking and international effort to hold individuals accountable for core international crimes and delivering justice. The Tribunal consisted of 11 judges and respective national prosecution teams from 11 countries, and a mixed Japanese–American team of defence lawyers. The IMTFE indicted 28 Japanese defendants, amongst them former prime ministers, cabinet ministers, military leaders, and diplomats, based on a 55-count indictment pertaining to crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The judgment was not unanimous, with one majority judgment, two concurring opinions, and three dissenting opinions. The trial and the outcome were the subject of significant controversy and the Tribunal’s files were subsequently shelved in the archives. While its counterpart in Europe, the ‘International Military Tribunal’ (IMT) at Nuremberg, has been at the centre of public and scholarly interest, the Tokyo Tribunal has more recently gained international scholarly attention. This volume combines perspectives from law, history, and the social sciences to discuss the legal, historical, political and cultural significance of the Tokyo Tribunal. The collection is based on an international conference marking the 70th anniversary of the judgment of the IMTFE, which was held in Nuremberg in 2018. The volume features reflections by eminent scholars and experts on the establishment and functioning of the Tribunal, procedural and substantive issues as well as receptions and repercussions of the trial.

Fully utilizing the latest archival material, this book provides a comprehensive, multi-dimensional and nuanced understanding of the Tokyo Tribunal by delving into the temporal aspects that extended the relevance and reverberations of the Tribunal beyond its end in 1948. With this as a backdrop, this book contributes to the study of Japanese postwar diplomacy. It shows the Tokyo Tribunal is still very much an experiment in progress, and how the process itself has helped Japan to quickly shed its imperial past and remain ambiguous as to its war responsibilities. From a wider vantage point, this book augments the existing scholarship of international criminal law and justice, offering a clear framework as to the limits of what international criminal tribunals can accomplish and offers a must-read for academics and students as well as for practitioners, journalists and policymakers interested in international criminal law and US-Japanese diplomatic history,