Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Editor's Note:

2026 marks the 80th anniversary of the start of the Tokyo Trial. As a landmark judicial event in the aftermath of World War II, the trial has exerted a profound influence on modern international criminal law and the evolution of international order, especially the regional order in Asia. What role did the Tokyo Trial play in shaping China's modern historical narrative and national memory? What significance does it have when we review the Tokyo Trial against the current global situation? Global Times (GT) reporter Wang Wenwen spoke with Rana Mitter (Mitter), a professor of US-Asia relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of Forgotten Alley, over these issues.

GT: You wrote the book Forgotten Ally, which highlights China's role in World War II. What role did the Tokyo Trial play in shaping China's modern historical narrative and national memory?

Mitter: One very significant element in the current concentration of the Tokyo Trial is what it says about China's relationship to its historical memory. The trial started in 1946. China sent its judge, Mei Ru'ao, to Tokyo to represent China. China's participation was a very important part of a wider globalization of China in the late 1940s. Take one example I've seen. Last year I was in Beijing and saw the very important new exhibits at the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression inside Wanping Fortress near Lugou Bridge. A new section of the museum concentrates on the United Nations and China's role in the foundation of the United Nations in San Francisco in April 1945.

We can see the Tokyo Trial as part of that wider set of changes that happen immediately after the Japanese defeat in 1945, where China becomes a country that is genuinely sovereign for the first time in more than 100 years since the Opium Wars and which is able to forge its own destiny in international society.

Sending the judge to Tokyo for the trial was part of a new set of changes that postwar China wanted to emphasize about being a full participant in the world of international law. Now, that has continued to be a very important part of shaping global society ever since 1945. For me, this presence of China at a multinational court was a really important moment in China, embracing the framework of international law when it came to war crimes. There was a Chinese judge, a Filipino judge, an Indian judge, an Australian judge, an American judge, a British judge. In other words, this is a world where the old divisions between Western countries and Asian countries are falling away. They are sitting there equally in judgment on the question of the war, and also acknowledging that law is not just nationally sovereign but transnational. This is not just China judging Japan. This is the international community talking about war crimes.

GT: You once argued that "Unlike Nuremberg, which continues to be a name associated with postwar justice, Tokyo's status as a location that shaped Asia after the war through legal drama and decisions is much vaguer." In your opinion, why has the Western world almost forgotten this trial in its collective memory?

Mitter: First of all, the war in Asia was always less visible from the point of view of Europeans and Americans until after the Pearl Harbor attack when the Americans, the British, and other Westerners became central to the war that was being fought in Asia. China had been fighting that war ever since 1937. Therefore, there is a much longer sense of Chinese involvement in the war against Japan during that period.

The second reason is that the Nuremberg Trial became essentially an important part of the reckoning that European society had with one of the greatest horrors that had taken place on its own soil, which was the Holocaust committed by Nazi Germany. In the case of East Asia, many of the atrocities and war crimes that were committed during the war by imperial Japan were still not well known in the Western environment.

And the third reason is that this was also a time of great instability in East Asia. There was not a stable environment in which Asia itself could think about the significance of the trial.

GT: What kind of obstacle does this "selective memory" pose to the West's understanding of Asian geopolitics today?

Mitter: Contemporary Western understanding of the geopolitics of Asia tends to underestimate how far East Asia and Southeast Asia are still shaped by the legacy of WWII, which ended in 1945 but in some ways has been continuing ever since.

The Cold War formation of Asia was different. China turned toward a socialist path, became closely allied to the Soviet Union and did not have diplomatic relations with the US, Japan and many Western countries for more than a quarter of a century. Meanwhile, Japan became a Cold War ally of the US, and much of Southeast Asia moved to post-colonial resistance to British, French and Dutch empires and pushed back very hard in a new wave of anti-colonial wars. That meant that there was no collective space in which the newly liberated countries of Asia could talk about the legacy of the war itself.

That isolation didn't really begin to change until the 1980s by which time all sides had developed a much more fixed view of what the war meant. The generation that had fought the war began to get old or die out, and international politics had moved on to a much more Cold War-oriented framework. The timing of that immediate post-1945 moment was very different in Europe and Asia.

GT: What significance does it have when we review the Tokyo Trial against the current global situation?

Mitter: The Tokyo Trial needs to be understood first and foremost as a triumph of international law. During those wartime years, the world was engulfed in the most devastating conflict in human history; the belligerent nations turned to invasion, occupation and destruction, leaving a world reduced to ashes and dust.

The Tokyo Trial represented essentially a vote of confidence in the idea that international structures and law could rise again. The collective body of Allied countries made it clear that the right way to go was to hold trials, as this would mean that there would be discussion of the evidence. The focus was not only on punishing the offenders but on understanding how societies could use law to make sure that such atrocities would not happen again.

I think much of the structure of international law, which is so important in our own era, derives from that same sentiment that was felt at the time for the Tokyo Trial. Many have argued that in the last 10 years or so we have entered an era of raw power, where nothing else matters except size. The Tokyo Trial proves the opposite. Consider the judges who represented various nations on that court - China, a weakened country at the time that nonetheless sent a judge to sit in that trial, the Philippines, a small country, along with the big European nations and the US. Even India, a country newly gaining independence, was also given its place as an equal player among nations. The notion of sovereign equality, the importance of law and the notion of peaceful methods to judge and deal with international conflicts are the lessons that the Tokyo Trial taught. That, I think, is of huge importance in our very turbulent times today. International law still has relevance, and going back to the Tokyo Trial is one way to understand why that is the case.