By Wang Shizhou
The Tokyo Trials were a just trial of Japanese fascist war criminals after WWII. Their criminal judgments effectively curbed Japanese fascist forces and brought encouragement to peace-loving people around the world.
The most prominent component of the Tokyo Trials was the proceedings in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) against Japan's Class-A war criminals. Class-B and Class-C war criminals, meanwhile, were tried in Yokohama, Japan, Nanjing, China, and other venues in the US. The name of the IMTFE itself indicates that its intended jurisdiction was not originally limited to Japanese fascists alone.
In fact, among the 39 individuals named in the first war criminals arrest warrant issued by the Allied occupation authorities after the war, there were not only notorious Japanese war criminals such as Hideki Tojo, but also more than a dozen non-Japanese suspects accused of collaboration with Japanese wartime aggression, including the president and the speaker of the National Assembly of the wartime Philippine puppet government. However, as events unfolded, the actual jurisdiction of the IMTFE was ultimately confined to Japan's Class-A war criminals, who were deemed responsible for the gravest offenses.
Like the Nuremberg Trials, the Tokyo Trials were founded principally on the basis of the Potsdam Declaration. It is explicitly stipulated in the Charter of the IMTFE that the tribunal was established for "the just and prompt trial and punishment of the major war criminals in the Far East."
During the first decade after WWII, the Tokyo Trials' judgments exerted a powerful and positive deterrent effect. The execution of major war criminals responsible for grave atrocities gave the peoples of Asia and the Allied nations, who had suffered immensely during the war, a strong sense that justice had been served.
Within Japanese society, positive assessments of the Tokyo Trials remained the mainstream view for a considerable period after the war. In terms of practical impact, the Tokyo Trials played a positive role in Japanese society. They made an important historical contribution to dismantling Japanese militarist forces, fostering the growth of democratic thought, and promoting judicial reform in postwar Japan.
Today, however, the criminal deterrent effect of the Tokyo Trials has evolved differently within the Japanese-language sphere and beyond it. Within the Japanese-language sphere, challenges to the legitimacy and significance of the Tokyo Trials began to emerge in the early 1950s.
As the US moved to support elements associated with Japan's former militarist establishment during that period, right-wing forces seized the opportunity to downplay and distort the historical significance of the Tokyo Trials. As a result, their deterrent effect among the Japanese public, particularly among younger generations, was significantly weakened.
Outside the Japanese-language sphere, the Tokyo Trials continue to retain strong deterrent force and remain a symbol of justice. The international community generally regards the essence of the Tokyo Trials as holding Japanese fascist war criminals accountable and upholding the authority of international justice and the rule of international law.
In the face of current efforts by Japan's right-wing forces to advance neo-militarism, the legal principles established by the Tokyo Trials, including that aggressive war constitutes a crime and that individuals bear responsibility for war crimes, remain powerful legal and moral foundations for the international community in restraining Japan's military expansion.
In safeguarding the postwar international order and preventing the resurgence of Japanese militarism, countries should continue to reaffirm, in multilateral forums such as the UN, the binding legal authority of the Tokyo Trials and the Potsdam Declaration. We should also work to build a broad international united front against neo-militarism, thereby transforming the criminal deterrent effect of the Tokyo Trials from a historical judgment into a tangible constraint on present-day conduct.
(The author is a professor emeritus of Peking University Law School)
Editor's note: Originally published on huanqiu.com, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.