TOKYO, May 3 (Xinhua) — As Sunday ushers in the 80th anniversary of the opening of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, or the Tokyo Trials, the landmark proceeding is far more than a chapter of history. It serves as a solemn warning to respect the verdict, uphold peace, and prevent historical tragedies from repeating themselves.
For two and a half years, 11 countries sat in judgment of Japan’s top wartime leaders, systematically documenting the atrocities of Japanese militarism during World War II. Twenty-five defendants were convicted; seven, including Hideki Tojo, the most atrocious war criminal who served as Japanese prime minister between 1941 and 1944, were hanged.
What began as a definitive legal reckoning with aggression and crimes against humanity, however, now faces a sustained campaign of historical denial. Right-wing forces in Japan seek to dilute the trials’ legacy, blur wartime guilt, weaken Japan’s postwar obligations, and mix historical revisionism with renewed militarism, posing fresh threats to regional security.
HARD, CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE
The legitimacy of the Tokyo Trials rests not on vengeance, but on an extraordinary foundation of proof.
A total of 818 court sessions, 419 witnesses testified, over 4,300 pieces of evidence were entered into the record, and the proceedings filled more than 48,000 pages. The tribunal laid bare, in unflinching detail, a litany of horrors from the Nanjing Massacre to the Bataan Death March.
In hearings on the Nanjing massacre, prosecutors presented survivor testimonies, official documents, and accounts from international witnesses to prove the scale of the slaughter. On narcotics trafficking, the tribunal found Japan ran state-controlled monopolies to poison Chinese communities and fund its wars, violating international treaties.
Recently, rare archival items, including six handwritten diaries by David Nelson Sutton, a U.S. assistant prosecutor at the Tokyo Trials and one of the earliest international prosecutors to investigate the Nanjing Massacre, were donated to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders. The journals, covering 1946 to 1948, offer an intimate, firsthand record of the effort to build the case against Japan’s military machine.
Zhou Feng, director of the memorial hall, calls the trials an authoritative legal archive that fixed Japan’s war crimes in unassailable fact. “It embodies the shared will of the anti-fascist allies and the world’s people,” he said. “It safeguards the victory of World War II, lays the legal foundation of the postwar international order, and declares that justice, light and progress will surely defeat evil, darkness and reaction.”
REVISIONISM ON THE RISE
Yet eight decades after that first gavel fell, the verdict of history is under growing assault — and with it, the stability of Asia.
At the site of the original tribunal, now located inside Japan’s Ministry of Defense, there is little solemn reflection on invasion or suffering. Instead, displays highlight Japanese military uniforms, swords and wartime gear, and there are signboards once used by the former defense agency, alongside brochures promoting the Self-Defense Forces and Japan’s defense policies.
Beyond the site, historical whitewashing is turning into policy provocation. The Japan Self-Defense Forces have fully participated in the U.S.-Philippines Balikatan joint military exercises for the first time. Senior officials sent offerings and ritual fees to Yasukuni Shrine, which honors convicted war criminals. The government relaxed rules on exporting lethal weapons. A bill is on the way to create a new national intelligence council and bureau.
Robert Barwick, Australian Citizens Party’s national chairman, called Japanese politicians’ recent shrine offerings “bitterly disappointing.” “What it tells you is that there’s a growing movement within Japan, and especially in the ruling party, to whitewash their own history at a time when they are remilitarizing.”
Critics also note the trials’ unfinished business, as it held no wartime accountability for Japan’s imperial family, and perpetrators of bacteriological and chemical warfare escaped justice.
“Japan’s war crimes in Korea, China and Southeast Asia were not fully liquidated. That is why far-right forces revived. They mislead the public by portraying Japan as a victim. Now, as a new militarism, it directly threatens peace in East Asia,” said Kwon Ki-sik, head of the Korea-China City Friendship Association.
HEED HISTORY’S LESSONS
The Tokyo Trials’ enduring value lies in its power to jolt societies into self-examination. It stripped away the propaganda of militarism and imperial divinity, revealing to ordinary Japanese the truth of their nation’s rampage across Asia, said Cheng Zhaoqi, director of Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Center for the Tokyo Trial Studies.
Junichi Hasegawa, 89 years old and the son of a Japanese soldier who fought in China, leads a group that walks Tokyo’s war relics. He has apologized in Nanjing three times and has led more than 400 tours of Yasukuni Shrine, distributing pamphlets that expose its role in glorifying aggression.
“I apologized on behalf of my father when I was 70 and 80 years old. When I turn 90, I want to travel to Nanjing again,” Hasegawa wrote in a note.
“I am not a vengeful person,” Mei Ru’ao, a Chinese judge during the Tokyo Trials, once wrote. “But I believe forgetting past suffering may invite future disaster.”
Citing Mei’s words, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said Sunday in a statement that reviewing the context, verdicts and tenets of the Tokyo Trials is of strong realistic relevance, as Japan’s neo-militarism gains momentum and poses real threats.
“Anyone or any force that overreaches itself in an attempt to whitewash past aggression will face firm opposition from peace-loving people across the world and will inevitably be brought once again before the tribunal of history,” the statement said.■
Truth, justice, unfinished business: Tokyo Trials still ring after 80 years
