The Nazi war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg had already been underway for months by the time its counterpart in Tokyo began in March 1946. The staggered start to these investigations made the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, known colloquially as the “Tokyo trial,” heir to the legal milestones laid in Germany. These included the novel concepts of “crimes against humanity” and “crimes against peace,” as well as the idea that individuals could be held criminally responsible for what had previously been considered acts of state.
Yet the Tokyo trial still had its own legal ground to break. It was “more or less the touchstone for the possibility of organized international justice,” in the words of Dutch judge Bert Röling. Unlike the procedures in Nuremberg, the Tokyo trial could claim to represent a genuine internationalism, with judges and prosecutors not only from the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union but also from China, India, and the Philippines. Together, the 11 judges overseeing the trial represented a majority of Earth’s population. The case before them would test whether international law, an instrument born out of European conquest and colonization, could become a vehicle for justice for the world at large.
In this respect, the Tokyo trial turned into a disaster. Problems were evident in the very first days. The president of the tribunal, an intemperate Australian named William Webb, never got a handle on the court. The American lead prosecutor, Joseph Keenan, was worse. Prolix and incompetent and visibly suffering from alcoholism, Keenan had a bad habit of running his mouth to the press, including letting it slip that Japan’s emperor had been spared indictment for the sake of political convenience. That was true enough, but it did not exactly help the tribunal’s already fragile claim to legitimacy. Neither was the air of hypocrisy that hung over the proceedings. This was, after all, a war crimes trial that wanted nothing to do with the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, let alone the US firebombing campaign that had killed around 200,000 to 300,000 Japanese civilians.