Reassessing the Tokyo war crimes trial: Richard Nottage reviews a recent book on the post-war trial of Japanese leaders.

• Author: Nottage, Richard
• Position: 'The Tokyo International Military Tribunal: A Reappraisal' by Neil Bolster and Robert Cryer - Book review

THE TOKYO INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL: A Reappraisal

Authors: Neil Bolster and Robert Cryer Published by: Oxford University Press, New York, 2008, 358pp, 63.50 [pounds sterling].

For 60 years the International Military Tribunal (IMT) for the Far East (Tokyo War Crimes Trial), held during 1946-48, has been relatively unstudied, especially in comparison with its European counterpart, the Nuremberg trials. There are several reasons. First, the extensive literature about the trial in Japanese is not well known outside Japan. Secondly, there is a degree of Euro-centrism in the scholarship on international criminal law. Thirdly, and uncomfortably for the Western powers, one judge--Pal of India--condemned atrocities by the Allies, especially the use of the atomic bomb. This dissension distinguished the Tokyo tribunal from Nuremberg, which allocated blame exclusively to the Axis powers.

Given this lacuna in the literature on international criminal law and on the Tokyo tribunal generally, a short explanation of the main aspects of the trial may assist the general reader. It cannot be understood without some knowledge of the domestic politics and constitutional arrangements in pre-war Japan and their impact on Japan's foreign relations from the 1920s: especially its expansion into Manchuria and China through the 1930s, Indo-China in 1941 and, after Pearl Harbor, into Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere in the Pacific. Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945 respectively. Russia declared war on Japan on 8 August and took over Manchuria. Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945, leading to the transformative occupation of Japan under a new constitution.

The legal foundations for punishing Japanese aggression took on a tangible form when the leaders of the United States, China and Great Britain adopted the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945, later adhered to by the Soviet Union. This provided for the punishment of Japanese 'war criminals', but not expressly for the establishment of an international criminal tribunal, nor for the prosecution of crimes against peace. These came six months later through 'a time-fractured procedure by which General MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, promulgated the Tokyo International Military Tribunal's Charter'. Initially by a Special Proclamation on 19 January 1946, he established an 'International Military Tribunal for the Far East' for the...