The International Military Tribunal for the Far East was criticized from every direction. Japanese conservatives and Asian radicals thought it had no right to sit in judgment over Japan’s wartime leaders. Liberals believed it should have tried Hirohito and paid more attention to crimes against women and Japan’s colonial subjects. Western policy-makers cavilled (behind closed doors) at the proceedings dragging on for too long, at their having to parlay with the Soviets and at the deployment of law rather than realpolitik. The beleaguered trial was even implicitly criticized by its leading sponsor, the USA, whose officials inflicted the final indignity by declining to publish the transcripts and judgments in English – the language in which the proceedings had been conducted – let alone ennobling them with calfskin and gilt-letter bindings. All the while, in Japan, the tribunal was beset by legal problems. Chief among these were the novelty of the charges set out in the Tokyo Charter,1 especially crimes against peace; the overblown indictment, including the additional charge of murder; the prosecution’s allegation of a grand conspiracy that could not possibly have existed; and the tribunal’s reliance upon a low standard of proof, despite considering the most serious international crimes. Läs presentationen
Gary J. Bass. Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023. Pp. xvi + 912. US$46.00. ISBN: 9781101947104.