E-Offprint PS 21 Chapter 21 Boister 02

Historical Origins of International
Criminal Law: Volume 2

Morten Bergsmo, CHEAH Wui Ling and YI Ping (editors)
PURL: http://www.legal-tools.org/doc/fa649c/
E-Offprint:
Neil Boister, “The Tokyo Military Tribunal: A Show Trial?”, in Morten Bergsmo, CHEAH
Wui Ling and YI Ping (editors), Historical Origins of International Criminal Law: Volume
2, FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014), Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher, Brussels,
ISBN 978-82-93081-13-5. First published on 12 December 2014.
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21
______
The Tokyo Military Tribunal: A Show Trial?
Neil Boister*
21.1 Introduction
Show trials of one sort or another are common through history – from the
trial and immolation of Jan Hus in Prague for a heresy against
Catholicism he never admitted to,1 through the injustices of the Dreyfus
affair in France,2 to the “telephone justice” meted out to the anti-Putin
oligarch Mikhail Khordorovsky in 2010 in Russia. 3 Perhaps those
considered most emblematic (they have become a rhetorical device) are
the Stalinist trials of the Great Purge of the 1930s, 4 conducted by the likes
of the infamous Procurator-General of the Soviet Union, Andrey
Vyshinsky, which were followed in the 1950s and 1960s by the post-war
Eastern Bloc trials.
This censorious label – “show trial” – has also been applied to
international criminal trials. At the Tokyo International Military Tribunal
for the Far East (1946–1948) (‘Tokyo Tribunal’ or ‘Tokyo Trial’), 5 it
*
Neil Boister is Professor at Te Piringa Faculty of Law, University of Waikato. In 2012 he
was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Criminal Law Sciences, Faculty of Law,
University of Hamburg and a Visiting Fellow at the Law Department, European University
Institute, Florence. He serves as a Member of the Editorial Board of the International
Journal on Human Rights and Drug Policy and as a Member of the Advisory Board of the
New Zealand Yearbook of International Law. He has published extensively in the areas of
international criminal law and transnational criminal law.
1
Thomas A. Fudge, The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure,
Oxford University Press, New York, 2013.
2
Piers Paul Reid, The Dreyfus Affair: The Story of the Most Famous Miscarriage of Justice
in French History, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2012.
3
“Russia on Trial”, in The Washington Post, 8 November 2010.
4
Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, Oxford University Press, New York,
1990; Arkady Vaksberg, The Prosecutor and the Prey: Vyshinsky and the 1930s Moscow
Show Trials, Weidenfield and Nicolson, London, 1990.
5
International Military Tribunal for the Far East (“IMTFE”), The United States of America
et al. v Araki, Sadao et al., (“Araki case”), Judgment, 4 November 1948
(http://www.legal-tools.org/en/doc/28ddbd/). See Neil Boister and Robert Cryer (eds.),
Documents on the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal: Charter, Indictment and Judgments, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 2008. The transcripts of the trial are available in R. John Pritchard
FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 3
Historical Origins of International Criminal Law: Volume 2
initially took the form of self-criticism. Justice Radhabinod Pal famously

dissented from the majority judgment, implying that the trial of the
wartime Japanese leadership for crimes against peace and war crimes by
the victorious Allied powers was a show trial.6 This chapter asks whether
the categorisation of the Tokyo Trial as a show trial is accurate. It
approaches this question by first, in part one, trying to identify the broad
characteristics of a show trial. Then in part two, by seeking to identify the
presence of these characteristics at Tokyo, the chapter examines whether,
and if so how, the Tokyo Trial was a show trial.
Why bother? The principal reason for engaging in this re-
examination is to explore whether and if so how trials such as that at
Tokyo – although arguably tainted – can nevertheless function as the
building blocks of international criminal law. This question has become
increasingly important given the growing criticism of international
criminal law. As the initial euphoria which coalesced around the
reinvigoration of international criminal law in the 1990s has faded, the
contradictions within international criminal law have begun to be
exposed.7 This has fuelled the growth in questioning of the rationale of
international criminal law itself. 8 This chapter is part of that re-
examination.
(ed.), The Tokyo Major War Crimes Trial: The Records of the International Military
Tribunal for the Far East with an Authorised Commentary and Comprehensive Guide,
Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY, 1998–2005, 124 vols. A selection of the main
secondary sources available in English include: Neil Boister and Robert Cryer, The Tokyo
International Military Tribunal: A Reappraisal, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008;
Madoka Futumaura, War Crimes Trials and Transitional Justice: The Tokyo Trial and the
Nuremberg Legacy, Routledge, London, 2008; Elizabeth S. Kopelman, “Ideology and
International Law: The Dissent of the Indian Justice at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial”, in
New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, 1991, vol. 23, no. 2, pp.
373–444; Richard H. Minear, Victor’s Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1971; B.V.A. Röling and Antonio Cassesse, The Tokyo
Trials and Beyond: Reflections of a Peacemonger, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1993; Yuma
Totani, The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II,
Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, MA, 2008.
6
Gerry Simpson, Law, War and Crime, Polity Press, London, 2007, p. 108.
7
See, for example, Makau Matua, “Never Again: Questioning the Yugoslavia and Rwanda
Tribunals”, in Temple International and Comparative Law Journal, 1997, vol. 11, pp.
167–88.
8
For two bookends of this criticism see Immi Tallgren, “The Sensibility and Sense of
International Criminal Law”, in European Journal of International Law, 2002, vol. 13, pp.
21.2. The Characteristics of a Show Trial

All criminal trials are show trials in the sense that they are public attempts
to reach a just pronouncement, but only certain trials can carry the
pejorative use of the label “show trial” comfortably. Commentators have
groped for defining characteristics of this more limited case. Two broad
characteristics contain most of the other identified characteristics.
21.2.1. The Predictability of the Outcome

For Jeremy Peterson, one of the most commonly identified characteristics
of a show trial is that they are defined by the increased probability, indeed
inevitability, of the accused’s conviction resulting from the planning and
control of the trial. 9 The Stalinist pre- and post- war show trials were
characterised, for example, by the undeviating adherence to a scripted
(pre-programmed) outcome: guilt. Or to put it another way, the focus of a
show trial is on the programmed reduction of “risk” in the conduct and
outcome of the trial. 10 The “set piece” nature of the trial is developed
through executive control of the establishment of the tribunal,
appointment of its officers, control of its jurisdiction and oversight of its
conduct.
Procedural fairness is commonly identified as essential to a valid
trial. Manipulation of the independence of the court, the rules of criminal
process and evidence may be engaged in in a show trial to achieve the
desired certainty of outcome. Gerry Simpson considers the ideological
rather than evidence-based selection of the accused as a mark of a show
trial.11 Peterson elaborates a number of further specific procedural failings
of a show trial: the denial to the defendant of the right to tell his or her
side of the story constituted by denial of the right to be heard and/or
561–95; Tor Krever, “International Criminal Law: An Ideology Critique”, in Leiden

Journal of International Law, 2013, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 701–23.
9
Jeremy Peterson, “Unpacking Show Trials: Situating the Trial of Saddam Hussein”, in
Harvard International law Journal, 2007, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 257, 260.
10
In rarer cases innocence might be the goal. The Leipzig Trials, for example, were
characterised by low punishments and a failure to indict most of the original 900 names
submitted. See Antonio Cassese, “Reflections on International Criminal Justice”, in
Modern Law Review, 1998, vol. 61, pp. 1, 7; and generally, C. Mullins, The Leipzig Trials:
An Account of the War Criminals’ Trials and a Study of German Mentality, Witherby,
London, 1921.
11
Simpson, 2007, p. 113, see supra note 6.
denial of counsel; insufficient evidentiary rights broken down into the

denial of the right to obtain exculpatory evidence, denial of the right to
challenge the prosecution’s evidence, failure to limit the record to
relevant evidence 12 or failure to admit relevant evidence; the role of a
party in oversight of the trial; insufficient proof requirements; reduced
independence or competence of decision-makers; denial of public access;
and lack of appropriate appeal rights. 13 A process that exhibits one or
more of these failures will tend towards distortion, and if it passes an
indeterminate qualitative threshold will become a “wicked” legal process,
perhaps, fundamentally, not legal at all.14 If the trial is unfair the system
becomes incredible and ultimately illegitimate. It undermines the
community interest in imposing criminal law and punishment through that
authority. A show trial publicly expresses not justice but brute power.15
It is not, however, simply the moulding of the process to suit which
creates a predictable outcome. The crime charged can also either be
created or modified to this end. Another of Peterson’s common
characteristics of a show trial is the unfairness of the crime of which the
defendant is accused. More pungently, Judith Shklar characterises a show
trial as the commission of an act for which there is no crime.16 Indeed, as
Mark Findlay points out:
To debate whether the accused should be before the courts in
the first place is to misunderstand the reality of show trials.
The state controls the labelling process. It can designate
offence categories, construe certain behaviour as criminal,
identify and apprehend offenders, and ignore surrounding
circumstances which might defuse the representation of
criminality.17
12
An elementary failing is failure to reject falsified evidence. The 1922 trial of the Social
Revolutionary Party designed by Lenin relied heavily, for example, on the evidence of
agents provocateurs. See Conquest, 1990, pp. 34–35, supra note 4.
13
Peterson, 2007, pp. 270 ff., see supra note 9.
14
See David Dyzenhaus, Hard Cases in Wicked Legal Systems, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2010, p. 1.
15
See Mark Findlay, “Show Trials in China: After Tiananmen Square”, in Journal of Law
and Society, 1989, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 352–53.
16
Judith N. Shklar, Legalism: Law, Morals and Political Trials, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA, 1986, p. 152.
17
Findlay, 1989, p. 34, see supra note 15.
He notes that the authority wielding power may concentrate on the due
process rights of the accused in order to divert attention from the fact that
the substantive crime is legally precarious. 18 The manipulation of the
legal system becomes necessary because, as Simpson points out, show
trials tend to be ad hoc responses to specific events.19 The crime charged
is in effect invented to suit the new political circumstances. Achieving the
desired outcome may also necessitate manipulation of the general
principles of criminal liability. Show trials may be forced to place a heavy
reliance on concepts of substantive collective criminal responsibility, such
as conspiracy, in order to impose the desired structure on historical
complexity and to reinterpret individual action and states of mind to fit
that structure. Exploring this reinterpretation of the past, Simpson argues
that show trials tend to erase the distinction between political error and
criminal liability and to juridically re-enact historical transformations:
“The accused are guilty not for what they have done but for where they
happen to stand when the political forces are transformed”. 20 Though
subjectively innocent, they are objectively guilty. 21
21.2.2. Exhibition for an External Target Audience

For Peterson, the other significant characteristic of a show trial is the
design or the management of the trial, with a focus on external observers
beyond the courtroom rather than on justice to the individual.22 How this
manifests itself in a particular case will depend in large part on (i) who is
the target audience, and (ii) what the lesson is to be. In a totalitarian
society this may have an internal element of indoctrination of the subject
population, and an external element of propaganda because the authors of
the trial are intent on putting on a “show” for an external audience over
which they do not have sufficient control.23 In the Stalinist show trials, for
example, the target audience may well have been in part potential internal
critics of his rule as well as external critics of the fairness of his regime.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
20
21
Ibid., pp. 123–26, citing Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible,
Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1969, p. 202.
22
Peterson, 2007, pp. 270 ff., see supra note 9.
23
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Shocken, New York, 2004, p. 452.
Observations made about the Stalinist show trials suggest two further
features of these teleological demonstrations.
First, they required the acceptance of subjective guilt by the
accused, an acceptance based entirely on false confessions extracted by
terror.24 But more than just confession, they also required repentance, or
as Robert Conquest puts it “the acceptance of the prosecution’s view that
the acts confessed to were appalling crimes”.25 Under enormous duress,
the accused participated in his or her own fantastic self-denunciation.
This was so fantastic it left the audience guessing as to whether
they really were guilty. 26 This led to the second requirement, public
subscription to the denunciation of the accused as their enemy. This
involved public reinterpretation of the defendant’s acceptance of his own
guilt and his repentance of these acts into an objective and abominable
crime. “I am guilty” had to translate into “we agree that you are guilty of
this horrible crime”. For George Hodos, the trials had “the aim of
personalizing an abstract political enemy”, to place that enemy in the
dock and “with the aid of a perverted system of justice, to transform
abstract political ideological differences into easily intelligible common
crimes”. 27 The authors of the trial made no effort to use the trial to
reinforce a common subscription to the criminal law by the target public.
No effort was made to use the trial to establish a community of
individuals which invests in that criminal law as a set of legal norms to
which their behaviour should conform. To put it in simple Hartian terms,
the authors of the trial are uninterested in using the trial to develop legal
rules with an “internal aspect” among those not directly aware of what is
occurring but rather only commands enforced through fear. 28 In societies
where the level of control over individual belief is near total, these
commands have an authority that extends far beyond the actual coercive
capacity of the state, and thus in a crude sense the community does exist
and it does believe that the accused are guilty. This may have been true,
for example, of the Stalinist trials of once mighty party functionaries
24
Conquest, 1990, p. 35, see supra note 4.
25
Ibid., p. 110.
26
Ibid.
27
George H. Hodos, Show Trials: Stalinist Purges in Eastern Europe, 1948–1954, Praeger,
New York, 1987, p. xiii.
28
H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994, pp. 82 ff.
whose unmasking was accompanied by popular legitimacy. 29 However,

even in such societies show trials function not to create a sense of social
pressure to conform and to choose against interest to subscribe to that
pressure and internalise that sense of obligation, but rather as a crude
exhibition of Hobbesian authoritarianism carried out without concern for
why those subject to the law choose to obey (legitimacy) – only that they
should (legitimation). The show trial reinforces loyalty, fidelity, not
autonomous morality. 30 There is no morality involved. The audience is
freed of the necessity of making a moral judgment because of their belief
in the utility of the trial in the ongoing revolution.31
21.2.3. Fantasies of Crime and Punishment

These characteristics of a show trial are obviously linked; a predictable
outcome is essential for a good show, a good show is important not to
overexpose the predictability of the outcome. It may be that the more
totalitarian the system, the more emphasis on the enforced compliance of
the accused and the audience in the show, whereas the more liberal and
legalistic the system, the greater the emphasis on using procedural and
substantive manipulation to achieve the desired show. Simpson argues
that an international criminal trial is only distinguished from a show trial
in degree – show trials are fantastic in every sense, parody legal
procedure, parrot obviously fabricated evidence, invent crimes to suit,
suggest the unlikeliest of conspiracies, none of which is the case in
international criminal trials.32 It does seem clear that all criminal trials are
on a scale – the more controlled and “showy”, the more apt the pejorative
label of “show trial” becomes. Simpson’s insight is that there is no clear
bright line between show trials and international criminal trials.
International criminal trials may only be less predictable in their
outcomes, less showy in their execution. Whether a trial crosses this
qualitative threshold will depend on a judgment about its design and
execution.
29
Conquest, 1990, pp. 71 ff., see supra note 4.
30
Hannah Arendt makes the point that in a totalitarian system one of the goals is to “empty
fidelity of any concrete content”. See Arendt, 2004, p. 429, supra note 23.
31
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate, Vintage, London, 2006, p. 512.
32
21.2.4. The Distinction between Victor’s Justice and Show Trials

We should be careful, before analysing the Tokyo Trial, however, not to
equate the charge of show trial with criticism about victor’s justice. 33
While show trials are predictable and showy in design and execution, the
charge of victor’s justice is grounded in the fact that it is the victors that
try the vanquished. Alejandro Chehtman doubts whether on its own the
fact the losers are on trial has any relevance to the legitimacy of the
trial. 34 He cites Hersch Lauterpacht in support, who considers the
assumption of the role of dispensing justice by victors a political
inevitability tempered only by legal fairness, which is also a condition of
its effectiveness:
In the existing state of international law it is probably
unavoidable that the right of punishing war criminals should
be unilaterally assumed by the victor. This is so in particular
when, as may be the case at the close of the second World
War, the victorious side represents the overwhelming
majority of states and when there are few neutral states left
capable of ensuring the impartial administration of justice.
Circumstances such as these constitute an additional reason
why the manner in which the punishment of war criminals
takes place should be not a manifestation of victorious
power but an act of international justice.35
Victorious states have long held a customary right to punish captured war
criminals for violations of the international laws of war.36 Lauterpacht is
at pains to distinguish the exercise of this right from something more
vindictive:
There is in this matter no question of any vindictive
retroactivity arising out of the creation of crimes of which
the accused could not possibly be cognizant. There is even
no question of procedural retroactivity by subjecting him to
33
Conquest, 1990, see supra note 4.
34
Alejandro Chehtman, The Philosophical Foundations of Extraterritorial Punishment,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010, p. 159-160.
35
Hersch Lauterpacht, “The Law of Nations and the Punishment of War Crimes”, in British
Yearbook of International Law, 1944, vol. 21, p. 59.
36
Ibid., pp. 61–62.
a foreign jurisdiction in defiance of established law and

principles.37
The long dominant criticism that the Tokyo Trial was victor’s
justice made inter alia by Richard Minear seems, in contrast to this dry
evocation of the right of a victor to sit in judgment on the international
crimes of those it captures, to be a criticism that the trial was more than
justice imposed by a victor; it was because of the way it was designed for
a predictable and exemplary outcome, an unjust trial, a show trial. 38 The
defence counsel Owen Cunningham commented about the Tokyo Trial
many years afterwards: “Victor’s justice spells vengeance, vindication
and paradox”.39
The prosecution of international crimes by the victors in a conflict
also raises the question of whether the victorious state is a judge in its
own cause. It is suggested by Chehtman that it is a mistake to test the
validity of the trial by the impartiality of the states that initiate the trial –
the victors – because the interest of the latter does not in his view render
the trial partial. 40 In his view impartiality normally depends on the
impartiality of individuals participating in the trial as prosecutors, judges
and so forth. In this analysis, the yardstick of partiality is whether the
participants in the trial express the partiality of the state and their political
masters.
Tu quoque arguments that the victorious state had in the past
engaged in the now proscribed activity can be validly avoided if the law
has in fact changed in the interim. A more difficult to evade ‘clean hands’
argument is when victorious states do not prosecute an extant crime but
one they made up. The argument that they have no authority to do so
because they would not be serving the interest of individuals in enforcing
an extant criminal law41 returns us to an already canvassed characteristic
of show trials: the absence of substantive legality.
37
Ibid., p. 67.
38
Ibid.
39
Owen Cunningham, Interview: “Trial of Tojo: Part I”, The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, Iowa
Oral History Project, Des Moines Public Library (no date).
40
Chehtman, 2010, p. 160, see supra note 34.
41
Ibid., p. 163.
21.3. Show Time at Tokyo?
21.3.1. Introduction
It is, as we shall see, at least arguable that the Tokyo Trial was designed
to result in a predictable outcome – guilt – and thus to show both the
Japanese public and the outside world who were responsible for the war
in East and Southeast Asia: Japan and its leaders. However, as we shall
see, the Tokyo Trial was neither entirely risk free nor was it an entirely
successful exhibition of war guilt. The programmatic and showy aspects
of the trial can be explored by examining the trial in greater detail,
isolating and contrasting those factors that made for a predictable
outcome and an effective exhibition from those that undermined it as a set
piece.
21.3.2. Executive Interference

The design of the trial tends to support the show trial thesis because the
Tokyo Tribunal was an ad hoc court unilaterally legislated into existence
by an executive body, for which multinational support was sought as an
afterthought. As a matter of international law, the Tokyo Tribunal was a
creation of the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender
(‘Potsdam Declaration’) 42 and the Instrument of Surrender. 43 The fact
that the Charter of the Tribunal (‘Charter’) was proclaimed by General
MacArthur, Supreme Commander Allied Powers (‘SCAP’),44 rather than
by multilateral treaty as in the case of the Nuremberg International
Military Tribunal, indicates substantial executive control of the
architecture of the trial by the United States. US influence was strongly
evident, for example, in the appointment of the US Prosecutor Joseph
Keenan as Chief of Counsel and the other Allied prosecutors as
42
Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, Issued at Potsdam, 26 July 1945
(http://www.legal-tools.org/uploads/tx_ltpdb/POTDAM_PROCLAMATION_RE_JAPANESE_
SURRENDER.pdf).
43
Instrument of Surrender, 2 September 1945 (https://www.legal-tools.org/uploads
/tx_ltpdb/Instrument_of_Surrender_Japan_1945_02.pdf).
44
Special Proclamation of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, C.182, 1 March
1946 (http://www.legal-tools.org/uploads/tx_ltpdb/File%203822-3828.pdf).
associates.45 There is a great deal of evidence of the heavy hand of the US

State War Navy Coordinating Committee (‘SWNCC’) in its design. As
matters progressed, however, some distance emerged between the trial
and its principal architect. The establishment of the Tokyo Tribunal was,
for example, sanctioned by Allied control through the Far Eastern
Commission (‘FEC’).46 And on review of the judgment, the US Supreme
Court held that the SCAP was an agent of the Allied powers and an
international tribunal. 47 The net result was the masking of US power
through the sanction of its allies, making it possible to argue that it was an
Allied rather than a US show. In the Supreme Court, Justice William O.
Douglas dissented that the Tokyo Tribunal was neither free nor
independent of US control. 48 Perhaps the balance of influence is best
illustrated by its official title: “The US and Others v. Araki, Sadao, and
others”. This may not be sufficient to justify the label show trial; but it
does show significant evidence of goal-directed behaviour.
One of Peterson’s characteristics of a show trial is the role of a
party in oversight of the trial. However, while the direct interference by
the SCAP in the trial at its outset also tends to expose the Tokyo Tribunal
as a show trial, the members of the Tribunal soon asserted their judicial
independence49 and the President of the Tokyo Tribunal, the Australian
Sir William Webb, actively resisted the SCAP’s attempt to direct the
Tribunal.50 The selection of the accused was perhaps the most obvious
example of an executive attempt to control the trial. Washington’s control
of who was to be selected was firm at the outset.51 It has been argued that
in selecting certain accused and labelling them “militarists”, the US,
working in the Nuremberg idiom, was intent on creating a set of
45
Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 26 April 1946
(https://www.legal-tools.org/uploads/tx_ltpdb/CHARTER_OF_THE_INTERNATIONAL
_MILITARY_TRIBUNAL_FOR_THE_FAR_EAST_02.pdf).
46
FEC 007/3, 29 March 1946, File no. EA 106/3/22/, Part 1, Archives New Zealand.
47
US Supreme Court, Hirota v. MacArthur, Judgment, in United States Reports, 1948, vol.
338, p. 198.
48
Ibid., p. 215.
49
Araki case, Transcript, 3 May 1946, p. 21 (http://www.legal-tools.org/en/go-to-
database/ltfolder/0_28747/#results), see supra note 5.
50
Letter from Judge Northcroft to PM Peter Fraser of NZ, 11 March 1946, File no. EA
106/3/22, Part 1, Archives New Zealand.
51
Ibid., para. 7(d).
politically disposable opponents 52 embodying something greater than

themselves: Japan’s imperial aspirations in East and Southeast Asia.
Selection was initially de facto a SWNCC prerogative but the FEC
attempted to assert some control. However, once established, it was the
executive committee of the prosecution under the British Prosecutor,
Arthur Comyns-Carr, that took control of the selection process, instituting
the principal criterion for selection as the degree of involvement in crimes
against peace.53 This is an example of how the introduction of unknown
and uncontrolled players into the trial tended to have a disruptive effect
on the script. US post-surrender policies certainly continued to have
influence in limiting selections, but the non-selection of members of the
zaibatsu (commercial conglomerates) 54 and Japan’s bacteriological and
chemical warfare programme introduced a cacophony of dissent within
the prosecution.55 Notoriously it was the SWNCC interfering to exclude
from selection the Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, for political reasons, a
policy which the FEC then sanctioned, 56 which caused most adverse
comment. 57 The New Zealand prosecutor noted, for example, that if it
were not for reasons of policy he should have faced trial, 58 and public
denunciations were made of Hirohito’s de facto immunity by Webb59 and
the French Judge Henri Bernard60 in their separate judgments. While the
process of selection tended to push the Tokyo Tribunal towards the
52
53
Memorandum from Mr. Comyns-Carr to the Executive Committee: Subject: Selection of
Accused, 1 April 1946, Box 1, Folder 4, IMTFE (IPS), Morgan, MSS 93-4, Law Library,
University of Virginia.
54
See Arnold Brackman, The Other Nuremberg: The Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes
Trials, William Morrow, New York, 1987, pp. 85–86.
55
See Tsuneishi Kei-ichi, “Reasons for the Failure to Prosecute Unit 731 and its
Significance”, in Yuki Tanaka, Tim McCormack and Gerry Simpson, Beyond Victor’s
Justice? The Tokyo War Crimes Trials Revisited, Nijhoff, Leiden, 2011, p. 177.
56
Noted in FEC 007/04, 4 April 1946, “Excerpt from the Minutes of the Seventh Meeting of
the FEC, 3 April 1946”, File no. EA 106/3/22, Part 1, Archives New Zealand.
57
See generally Totani, 2008, p. 43, supra note 5.
58
Quilliam to Foss Shanahan, Department of External Affairs, Wellington, 31 October 1947,
File no. 106/3/22, Part 6, Archives New Zealand.
59
Araki case, Separate Opinion of the President, 1 November 1948, p. 18 (http://www.legal-
tools.org/uploads/tx_ltpdb/JU01-11-a.pdf), see supra note 5.
60
Araki case, Dissenting Opinion of the Member for France [Henri Bernard], 12 November
1948, pp. 20–22 (http://www.legal-tools.org/uploads/tx_ltpdb/JU02-05-a.pdf), see supra
note 5.
threshold of show trial, ironically the internal rancour this caused drew it
back because it tended to indicate a lack of control of the outcome or the
lesson to be taught.
The formalist response of the Majority of the Tribunal (‘Majority’)
which wrote the judgment in reply to challenges to the SCAP’s legislative
power to establish the crimes in the Charter – they held the “law of the
Charter is decisive and binding on the Tribunal”61 – assisted merely to
confirm the predictability of the outcome of the trial. But the dissents of
the Indian Judge Pal, Dutch Judge B.V.A. Röling and French Judge
Bernard in this regard famously undermined that predictability. Despite
significant evidence to the contrary, Pal considered that the intention in
Article 5 which spelled out the jurisdiction of the Tokyo Tribunal over
specific crimes, including crimes against peace, was not to enact crimes
but to leave the question of whether they were crimes to the Tribunal to
decide by reference to appropriate law; 62 the Tokyo Tribunal was
“judicial”, “not a manifestation of power”.63 This abrogation of legislative
power from the Allied governments shocked the New Zealand prosecutor
R.H. Quilliam into responding in a report to his superiors: “It would
appear to be scarcely credible that the Governments of the United Nations
have agreed, by undertaking the prosecution, to the Tribunal deciding the
question of the responsibility of the war”.64 But the New Zealand Judge
Erima Northcroft was less outraged, noting that if this had not been so,
“the nations constituting [the Tribunal] would have made plausible the
popular criticism that such trials are acts of vengeance or retribution
visited by victorious nations upon the vanquished”. 65 The simple
possibility of questioning the validity of the crimes in the Charter served
to undermine the predictability of its outcome.
61
Araki case, Judgment, 12 November 1948, p. 24 (http://www.legal-tools.org/en/go-to-
database/record/28ddbd/), see supra note 5.
62
Araki case, Dissenting Opinion of the Member for India [Radhabinod Pal],
(http://www.legal-tools.org/uploads/tx_ltpdb/JU01-13-a-min_02.pdf), see supra note 5.
63
Ibid., p. 36.
64
Brigadier R.H. Quilliam, Report on the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal
of the Far East, File no. EA 106/3/22, Part 7, p. 18, Archives New Zealand.
65
Mr. Justice E.H. Northcroft, Memorandum for the Right Honourable Prime Minister upon
the Tokyo Trials 1946–1948, File no. EA 106/3/22, Part 9, p. 14, Archives New Zealand.
21.3.3. Procedural Irregularity

In a speech made prior to his appointment to lead the prosecution at
Nuremberg, Justice Robert Jackson advocated the necessity of the
independence of a judicial process to be used to respond to the
depredations of the Second World War, and warned against the use of
“farcical judicial trials” to rationalise the political decision to execute
alleged war criminals. If a “good faith trial” was to be relied on, guilt
would have to be proven.66 He continued:
But there is no reason for a judicial trial except to reach a
judgment on a foundation more certain than suspicion or
current rumor. Men of our tradition cannot regard any
proceeding as a trial that does not honestly search for the
facts, bring forward the best sources of proof obtainable,
critically examine testimony. But, further, you must put no
man on trial if you are not willing to hear everything
relevant that he has to say in his defense and to make it
possible for him to obtain evidence from others. Nothing
more certainly discredits an inquiry than to refuse to hear the
accused, even if what he has to say borders upon the
immaterial or improbable. Observance of this principle is of
course bound to make a trial something of a sounding board
for the defense.67
For Jackson, the validity of an international criminal process depends on
procedural fairness.
Procedural fairness at Tokyo was formally pledged in terms of
Article 1 of the Charter, which guaranteed the accused a fair trial. In spite
of this, the defence immediately attacked the fairness of the trial because
the SCAP through the Charter had “so altered and revised the rules of
evidence, procedure and trial as heretofore applied by military tribunals
and courts of criminal justice by all civilized nations”. 68 Denial of the
right to counsel is one of Peterson’s characteristics of a show trial and
such denial was clearly in evidence at Tokyo. The prosecution, for
example, used evidence from lengthy interrogations undertaken without
66
Robert H. Jackson, “The Rule of Law among Nations”, in American Bar Association
Journal, 1945, vol. 31, p. 290.
67
Ibid., p. 292.
68
Araki case, Motion to Dismiss on Behalf of All Defendants, 4 July 1946, p. 3, see supra
note 5.
the presence of counsel.69 Although Article 9(c) of the Charter guaranteed

the right to counsel at trial, and both Japanese and US counsel were
provided, counsel were frequently subject to judicial abuse.70 Article 9(d)
of the Charter established the right to conduct a defence, including the
right to examine witnesses and thus to challenge the prosecution’s
evidence. But in practice, this was limited in various ways. The defence
was granted various rights including the right under Article 9(e) to apply
for the production of witnesses and documents. Most relevantly however,
Article 7 gave the Tokyo Tribunal the power to draft rules for day to day
procedure and in terms of Rule 9, the Tribunal gave itself the power to
change the rules as it saw fit and in specific cases, which is what it did
repeatedly, constantly changing the rules to the defence’s disadvantage. 71
Another of Peterson’s characteristics of a show trial is a lack of
appropriate appeal rights, and this was manifest in the Charter which in
terms of Article 17 only provided for review by the SCAP of sentence.
When it came to carrying out this duty, it appears that the SCAP may not
even have read the Majority judgment72 before deciding that there was no
technical ground justifying change to any sentences, despite some Allied
support for mercy,73 the gift of which was his correct role.74 Perhaps one
of the most glaring procedural irregularities at Tokyo, at least from an
adversarial perspective, was the insistence that evidence in mitigation be
given before conviction, 75 forcing defence counsel to hypothetically
accept conviction.
69
See Meirion Harries and Susie Harries, Sheathing the Sword: The Demilitarization of
Japan, Macmillan, New York, 1987, pp. 111–12.
70
See John A. Appleman, Military Tribunals and International Crimes, Bobbs-Merrill,
Indianapolis, 1954, p. 244, who cites a large number of examples.
71
See Lawrence W. Wadsworth, A Short History of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, with
Special Reference to Some Aspects of Procedure, Ph.D. Thesis, American University,
1955, p. 163.
72
See Röling and Cassese, 1993, p. 82, supra note 5.
73
See Report by the British Representative on the Allie Control Council, Sir A Gascoigne to
Mr. A. Bevin, 15 December 1948, no 246, F 17785/48/23, File no. 106/3/22, Part 8,
Archives New Zealand.
74
GHQ, Far East Command, Public Information Office, Immediate Release, 24 November,
File no. 106/3/22, Part 8, Archives New Zealand.
75
Rule 10 – US v Araki, Sadao, et al: Amendment of the Rules of Procedure by the adoption
of Rules 10 and 11, Papers of Sir William Flood Webb, Series 4, Wallet 5, 3DRL/2481,
Australian War Memorial.
Insufficient proof requirements are another of Peterson’s

characteristics of a show trial. Article 13(a) of the Charter provided that
the Tokyo Tribunal was not bound by the technical rules of evidence.
What tends to support the show trial hypothesis is not the non-technical
approach – something common in courts martial – but that this non-
technical approach to evidence left the responsibility for verifying
evidence and weighing its probative value to a bench drawn from the
defendant’s enemies.76 What followed was regular variation of the rules
used selectively to permit the prosecution’s version to go in, no matter
how tenuous and even when based on fourth hand hearsay such as the
Saionji-Harada memoirs and the Marquis Kido’s diary. 77 At the same
time, the Tokyo Tribunal denied admission of defence evidence
challenging the prosecution’s characterisation of historical events, another
of Peterson’s characteristics of a show trial. In this way for example, and
as pointed to by Pal, the Majority rejected tu quoque evidence relating to
Allied complicity in crimes against peace such as the Soviet invasion of
Finland and of Japan itself in violation of a non-aggression pact.78 The
hearsay rule, opinion rule and best evidence rule were all abused to the
end of supporting the prosecution’s version of events. 79 The Majority
failed to utilise the broad rule of admissibility to permit all relevant
evidence to go in. Among many examples, the Tokyo Tribunal allowed
the second version of an affidavit by the former ambassador to Japan,
Joseph Grew, to go in for the prosecution, but denied as opinion evidence
a defence attempt to put in the first version.80 The failure to admit relevant
evidence is one of Peterson’s marks of a show trial and that failure
certainly occurred at Tokyo. Another of Peterson’s marks of a show trial
is the failure to limit the record to relevant evidence and this abuse was
also on display at Tokyo. The Majority, for example, accepted evidence
of violations of Japan’s international drug control treaty obligations as a
means to aggression in China through its deliberate supply of drugs to the
Chinese people.81
76
Wadsworth, 1955, p. 21, see supra note 71.
77
See Boister and Cryer, 2008 (Reappraisal), p. 113, supra note 5.
78
Araki case, Transcript, pp. 21081, 22451, see supra note 5.
79
See Boister and Cryer, 2008 (Reappraisal), pp. 105-6, supra note 5.
80
Araki case, Transcript, p. 10208, see supra note 5.
81
See Neil Boister, “Punishing Japan’s ‘Opium War-Making’ in China: The Relationship
between Transnational Crime and Aggression at the Tokyo Tribunal”, in Yuki Tanaka,
Many of these procedural and evidential irregularities were used to

control the evidence ultimately accepted by the Tokyo Tribunal and thus
serve to support the thesis that the trial was a show. Yet in spite of this
constant intervention to control the evidence, reading the trial as a whole,
one can only conclude that this control constantly faltered: disruptive
information seeped through the cracks, the defence mounted a strong
assault on the legality of many of these actions, and the trial was subject
as it proceeded to blasts of harsh criticism. Perhaps most telling was
defence counsel Owen Cunningham’s devastating attack entitled “The
Major Evils of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial”, presented while the trial
was in progress to the 1948 American Bar Association Meeting82 where
he concluded: “No nation has the right to administer a lower standard of
justice to the citizens of another nation than it would require for its
own”.83 He was held in contempt by the Tribunal, but the story was out.
According to Cunningham, Webb told him personally that although he
must reprimand him he thought “it was a great speech”.84
21.3.4. Unrepresentative and Biased Judges

Perhaps the most important of Peterson’s features of a show trial is a lack
of judicial independence leading to a predetermined outcome. There is a
prima facie case against the Tokyo Tribunal in this regard as the judges
were all drawn from the victor nations, with no neutral or Japanese
judges. This is dramatically reinforced through the selection by some
states of judges with a clear bias such as Webb, who had acted for
Australia in war crimes investigations,85 Judge Delfin Jaranilla from the
Philippines, who had been a Japanese prisoner and had been subject to
brutal treatment,86 and the replacement US Judge General Myron Cramer,
Tim McCormack and Gerry Simpson (eds.), Beyond Victor’s Justice? The Tokyo War
Crimes Trials Revisited, Nijhoff, Leiden, 2011, pp. 324, 329.
82
File no. 106/3/22., Part 8, Archives New Zealand.
83
“The Major Evils of the Tokyo Trials”, Paper to the ABA, Seattle Washington, 7
September 1948, recommendation 4, File no. 106/3/22, Part 8, Archives New Zealand.
84
Cunningham, n.d., see supra note 39.
85
See, for example, Sir William Flood Webb, “A Report on Japanese Atrocities and
Breaches of the Rules of Warfare”, 15 March 1944, AWM 226, 5, Australian War
Memorial.
86
IMTFE, The United States of America et al. v. Araki, Sadao et al., Paper no. 141, Motions
Presented to the Court, 4 June 1946, vol. 1, 3 May 1946–14 October 1946, IMTFE, Tokyo,
Northcroft Archive, MacMillan Brown Library, University of Canterbury.
whose daughter had been interned by the Japanese in the Philippines. 87

The attempt to unseat the judges for bias failed because the Tokyo
Tribunal decided that only the SCAP had the power to do so.88 Members
of the Majority also showed bias during the trial. As Judge Röling pointed
out for example, they found that there was no evidence of aggressive
intentions on the part of the Soviet Union against Germany or Japan
despite denying the accused the right to prove such aggressive
intentions.89
The constant to-ing and fro-ing of judges at Tokyo, with some
absent for significant parts of defence evidence, also suggested a degree
of judicial contempt for the process, and perhaps that its outcome was a
foregone conclusion. But other judges were livid at this, and the resulting
tensions served to increase the rate of disintegration of judicial
consensus.90 The bench had begun to fall apart almost from the outset of
the trial when the defence motions challenging the jurisdiction of the
court catalysed Pal and then the other dissenters to depart from the hoped-
for consensus.91 But in a significant way it was the Judge President Webb
who, through his clumsy attempts to justify the Allied position in natural
law in his draft judgments, did much to fuel this disintegration which
evolved through the trial to the final judgment written in secrecy by a
majority of seven. This disintegration damages the show trial thesis,
because it illustrates the faltering Allied control over the execution of the
design.
21.3.5. A Trial of Aggression

The design of the Tokyo Trial was built around the crime of aggression.
At Tokyo, much greater importance was placed by the Allied powers on
the redefinition of the factual behaviour of invasion of another state as a
new legal category – a crime – where certain moral or political
explanations were no longer tenable. The Allies pursued the cementing of
87
Cunningham, n.d., see supra note 39.
88
Araki case, Proceedings in Chamber, Transcript, vol. 22, p. 22, see supra note 5.
89
Araki case, Opinion of the Member for the Netherlands [Mr. Justice Röling], p. 86
(http://www.legal-tools.org/uploads/tx_ltpdb/JU02-04-a-min.pdf), see supra note 5.
90
See Boister and Cryer, 2008 (Reappraisal), p. 96, supra note 5.
91
See Röling and Cassese, 1993, p. 29, supra note 5.
this element of the Nuremberg idiom 92 relentlessly. One of the

foundational conditions of the trial was the presumption of the correctness
of the Western view of the political and military context in East and
Southeast Asia; not to accept Japanese aggression would have been to
open Allied conduct to criticism. But opening the question inevitably led
to uncomfortable questions about which side caused the war. One of the
markers of justice is the possibility the accused may go free if the crime
itself is invalid. Much ink has been spilt on the question of whether
aggression was a crime at the time the Japanese acted. There is little point
to add to it here other than to say that while the Majority might validly
rely on treaties such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact to determine that there
was a tortious obligation not to use force in international relations, this
did not translate into a criminal obligation on individuals. This lack of
legal authority was subject to brutal criticism from Judge Pal who
commented that only a lost war was a crime.93 He noted that due process
in the service of an invalid criminal offence – the crime against peace –
did not cure the trial of its political nature.
The so-called trial held according to the definition of crime
now given by the victors obliterates the centuries of
civilization which stretch between us and the summary
slaying of the defeated in a war. A trial with law thus
prescribed will only be a sham employment of legal process
for the satisfaction of a thirst for revenge. It does not
correspond to any idea of justice. Such a trial may justly
create the feeling that the setting up of a tribunal like the
present is much more a political than a legal affair, an
essentially political objective having thus been cloaked by a
juridical appearance. Formalized vengeance can bring only
an ephemeral satisfaction, with every probability of ultimate
regret; but vindication of law through genuine legal process
alone may contribute substantially to the re-establishment of
order and decency in international relations.94
Röling’s resort to interpreting crimes against peace as a political
measure to effectively eliminate dangerous political opponents is rooted
92
See Martti Koskenniemi, “Between Impunity and Show Trials”, in Max Planck Yearbook
of United Nations Law, 2002, vol. 6, pp. 1, 17.
93
Araki case, Dissenting Opinion of the Member for India [Radhabinod Pal]
(http://www.legal-tools.org/doc/712ef9/), pp. 128, see supra note 5.
94
Ibid., p. 37.
in the same scepticism.95 Webb shared the view that the SCAP could not
legislate international law through the Charter, 96 and this led to his
attempts to wrestle a natural law solution to it in his draft opinions and to
his (finally successful) argument that the death penalty was inappropriate
for a conviction of crimes against peace. 97 These judicial responses
reflected the disintegrative tendency introduced into the trial by the
legislation of crimes against peace for the specific purpose of excusing
Allied behaviour and taking control of former enemies.98 They left it open
for critics of the trial, like defence counsel Takayanagi Kenzo, to make
the obvious point that the enduring impression on Japanese minds would
be one law for the Allies and another for the Japanese.99
Paradoxically, the choice of crimes against peace as the trial’s
centrepiece by the Allies revealed only that Japan behaved like so many
imperial states before it, including many of the Allies. But the most potent
tu quoque argument raised at Tokyo was that the Allies, as imperial
powers, could not try these offences not because they themselves
continued to engage in imperial invasion, but because they continued to
use force against the inhabitants of those territories which they had
invaded and colonised. Pal’s critique of what he considered to be an
Allied attempt to freeze international relations to permit the continuation
of these empires but prevent the emergence of new ones, 100 resonates with
Simpson’s insight that the accused in show trials are subjectively innocent
but objectively guilty. This immobilisation of international relations
reinforced the notion that the new position, with the imperial powers
holding significant imperial possessions by force but disallowing any new
use of force to this end, could not validly be used as a yardstick against
which to measure the Japanese leaders’ conduct that had been carried out
under the old reality. It is striking in this regard that many in the
95
Araki case, Opinion of the Member for the Netherlands [Mr. Justice Röling]
(http://www.legal-tools.org/doc/fb16ff/), p. 45-45A, see supra note 5.
96
Subject: Notes on Certain Points of Law (I), Memo to: All Judges, 12 June 1946, Papers of
William Flood Webb Series 4, Wallet 20, 3DRL/2481, Australian War Memorial, 2-3.
97
Araki case, Separate Opinion of the President, pp. 15-17 (http://www.legal-
tools.org/en/go-to-database/record/1db870/), see supra note 59.
98
See generally Kirsten Sellars, ‘Crimes against Peace’ and International Law, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2013, p. 101.
99
Araki case, Transcript, pp. 42283–4, see supra note 5.
100
(http://www.legal-tools.org/doc/712ef9/), p. 112, see supra note 5.
prosecution (Chief Prosecutor Keenan in particular) and among those

judges more concerned about the tenuous roots of crimes against peace in
particular were avowedly naturalist in their thinking. 101 They appear at
times to have accepted that in positivist terms the accused may be
subjectively innocent but maintained in natural law terms that they were
objectively guilty. However, as the arch positivism of the defence was
laid out the prosecution tended to become more positivist and the bench
split leaving a core of formalists at the centre of the majority (principally
Northcroft, Lord Patrick, Edward MacDougall), a number of sympathetic
naturalists (Webb, Bernard) and the soft (Röling) and hard positivist
dissenter (Pal). The Tokyo Trial may have been designed as a show trial
around the validity of crimes against peace, but the division of judicial
views on this issue serves to undermine the claim that the execution of the
trial was much of a show.
The Tokyo Tribunal’s historical investigation of the conduct of
Japanese aggression tried to answer the question why the war was begun
by Japan by investigating in weighty detail how it was begun. The steps
that led to war gave a sense of a growing causal pressure which could be
traced to the Japanese high command and political military leadership.
This suited legal analysis because of its analytical clarity, but has been
decried by historians as essentially a distortion of an incredibly complex
picture.102 The use of crimes against peace did guarantee a very long and
increasingly unstable trial. Indeed, it is arguable that no single factor had
as negative an impact on the didactic purposes of the trial as its incredible
length. As the record grew the Tokyo Trial became bogged down in
minutiae of the details of Japanese occupation of China and Southeast
Asia, to the point where the audience, both media and public, was bored
to death and left, the show began to flop, and the complexities of history
began slowly to emerge.
21.3.6. Collective versus Individual Responsibility

Conspiracy, both as an inchoate crime and a form of participation in
crimes against peace,103 was employed at Tokyo as a structural culpability
101
See Boister and Cryer, 2008 (Reappraisal), pp. 271 ff., supra note 5.
102
See, for example, Minear, 1971, pp. 178–80, supra note 5.
103
See, for example, Neil Boister, “The Application of Collective and Comprehensive
Criminal Responsibility for Aggression at the Tokyo International Military Tribunal: The
rather than individual culpability device.104 It was an elaboration of the

outcome that drove reliance on crimes against peace – the responsibility
of the accused for the actions of Japan as a whole. This allowed the
accused to be joined in single trial, and then a theory of the evidence
implicating each of them in a grand rolling conspiracy to be put to the
Tribunal. Defence counsel Takayanagi likened these progressive
conspiracies to those used for the expansion of the British, French, Dutch
and Russian empires and the expansion of the United States. 105 Yet
various judges dissented on the validity of the inchoate crime of
conspiracy (termed the “naked conspiracy” in the judgment) in
international law, most prominently Webb. 106 Conspiracy was more
broadly accepted as a principle of complicity in the principal offence of
planning for and waging war, transforming those who acted into the
implied agents of those who shared their aggressive purpose. The Tokyo
Tribunal did not, however, insist on a clear conspiratorial purpose to
which all alleged conspirators subscribed. Pal commented sarcastically
that he thought the theory of a Japanese conspiracy “had been pushed a
little too far, perhaps”, in order to give it a “place in the Hitler series”.107
The danger of placing too much emphasis on the collective responsibility
of a small group of individual leaders is, as Martti Koskenniemi has more
generally pointed out, that it may “serve as an alibi for the population at
large to relieve itself from responsibility”. 108 This danger appears to have
been borne out in Japan. The Tokyo Tribunal did not involve a Stalinist
condemnation by the Japanese of their own. The difficulty of convincing
the Japanese public that they were guilty was exposed by challenges made
to this thesis during the trial and it unravelled. This occurred in part
because the authors of the trial did not have sufficient control over the
public to make them believe in the thesis. The focus of the trial on
Measure of the Crime of Aggression?”, in Journal of International Criminal Justice, 2010,

vol. 8, pp. 425–47.
104
Simpson, 2007, pp. 118–19, see supra note 6.
105
Kenzo Takayanagi, The Tokio Trials and International Law: Answers to the Prosecution’s
Arguments on International Law Delivered at the International Military Tribunal for the
Far East on 3rd and 4th March 1948, Yuhikaku, Tokyo, 1948, p. 17.
106
Araki case, Separate Opinion of the President (http://www.legal-tools.org/doc/1db870/),
pp. 8–9, see supra note 5.
107
(http://www.legal-tools.org/doc/03dc9b/), p. 693, see supra note 5.
108
Koskenniemi, 2002, p. 14, see supra note 92.
individuals excused the Japanese public collectively and they in turn

excused the individuals concerned. A request for release on clemency
grounds for all Class A prisoners noted in 1952 that the Japanese public
“rather warmly sympathise” with them.109 It propagated a view of history
which is now accepted, at least in Japan, as one of several legitimate
competing interpretations of the past. To some, the accused are martyrs
and their trial sealed their martyrdom.
21.3.7. Common Criminality

It was one of the intentions of the trial to take key Japanese political
actors and depoliticise them in order to make them fit a structure which
reduced them to common criminals – conspirators, murderers, drug
traffickers. This responded to the need to banish them from Japanese
political life because they were politically dangerous to the new
configuration of political forces evolving in East Asia. One rather peculiar
consequence of this was that instead of trying the accused for crimes
against humanity, as set out in the Charter, those charges were dropped
and the accused were charged with murder on the heavily naturalist theory
that killing in an illegal war is unjustified.110 By judgment, however, these
counts were, probably because of judicial scepticism about them, simply
rolled into the judgment about crimes against peace. 111 Once again, the
judiciary had both interfered with and accepted the prosecutorial design.
21.3.8. The Tokyo Trial: A “B Movie”?

Identifying the trial’s audience and achieving the desired effect on them
are critical to the exhibitionary element of a show trial. The intrusion of
cameras into the courtroom was originally feared because of the media’s
power to perturb the outcomes of trials.112 But the possibility of reaching
a far larger audience was too tempting; Nuremberg had already broken
109
Decision on the Recommendation on Release by Clemency of Class A War Criminals, 20
October 1952, By Shirane, Matsusuke, Chairman of the National Offenders’ Prevention
and Rehabilitation Commission, File no. EA 106/3/22, Part 11, Archives New Zealand.
110
Araki case, Counts 39–43, 45–52 of the Indictment (https://www.legal-tools.org
/uploads/tx_ltpdb/INDICTMENT_01.pdf).
111
Araki case, Judgment, 48452-3, see supra note 5.
112
Christian Delage, Caught on Camera: Film in the Courtroom from the Nuremberg Trials
to the Trials of the Khmer Rouge, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2014,
pp. 177–78.
the ice, and Tokyo was designed for maximum media exposure. The trial
took place in the former Army Ministry buildings in a courtroom of over
one thousand seats of which 660 were on an overlooking visitor’s gallery.
To ensure the newsreel cameras had a clear view, huge Klieg lights, arc
lamps used for film-making, were installed, giving the courtroom the
appearance of a film set and making it unbearably hot.113 The theatrical
atmosphere was not lost on observers; Judge Northcroft described it as
“derogatory of the dignity of the court’”114
In result, the audience became a participant in the longer-term
process. At Nuremberg, lights were installed above the defendants by the
acclaimed feature film director John Ford to reveal the defendant’s facial
expressions, and a similar practice appears to have been pursued at
Tokyo. The filming of the trial at Tokyo was done to highlight the role of
individuals in the engineering of Japan’s wars of aggression and to expose
their excuses as spurious. At Tokyo the audience was both the Japanese
public, who would recognise in the individuals on trial their own
responsibility, and the global public, who would guarantee what was
being narrated would never happen again. The ultimate goal was to
cultivate global solidarity through the prosecution of the novel crimes
against peace. But in reality, it exposed a shoddy prosecution, judicial
partiality, and the trial as long and boring.
Newsreel footage of the trial reveals that by its end, the accused
appeared to have accepted that they too had a part to play in the show.
When called forward one by one to be convicted these often very frail old
men, did so with great dignity, and when they received their penalty – for
seven, death – they bowed very formally and retired with grace – the
show over. Even if this was not in fact the case, the filming of the trial
made it appear so. Yet the filming failed to fulfil the desired function of
extending the narrative of condemnation of aggression into the future.
Instead what ensued in the post-trial period was a “war” of the films, in
which the US newsreels were archived and supplanted by films made
from very different national perspectives in Japan115 and in China.116
113
Brackman, 1987, p. 152, see supra note 54.
114
See Letter from Judge Northcroft to AD McIntosh, Secretary for External Affairs,
Wellington, 2 July 1946, File no. EA 106/3/22, Part 3, Archives New Zealand.
115
See, for example, Masaki Kobayashi’s The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (1983) (film) and
Shunya Ito’s Pride (1998) (film).
21.4. Allied Players in a Tainted Trial

If the criticism of Tokyo as a show trial bites, why then were so many
Allied serviceman content to work in this ad hoc judicial institution
without qualms about its ultimate ratio? It is difficult to accept that they
were committed without qualms to the Allied cause or following orders as
Vyshinsky-like automatons, ready and willing to do their masters’
bidding. The emphasis on procedural rather than substantive legality
explains why numerous Allied personnel could feel comfortable with the
outcome. They had only to ensure the trial was conducted correctly. The
trial was very much a legal undertaking where a great deal of effort was
made to establish or deny the material and mental elements of the
accused’s individual guilt, to develop or unsettle the meanings of
fundamental principles of international criminal liability, and to follow or
change rules of evidence and procedure, and to justify or prevent
conviction and punishment. It was this contest over legality which to
some extent loosened the controlling political grip of the Allies, and thus
rescued the trial from total legal oblivion. However, while the judges and
the prosecutors could labour at being disinterested in the substance of the
rules then being applied, the trial itself transformed them into historians
who worked every day to reinterpret history. And for many, it appears
that as their knowledge of the situation grew, their faith in the project
withered: judges like Röling, the more they became acculturated to the
“enemy”, the less convinced they became of the validity of many of the
premises of the trial. When very late in the trial, the obviously almost
entirely disenchanted Judge Northcroft, Lord Patrick and Judge
MacDougall – the core judges of the Majority – all asked their separate
governments if they might resign rather than be party to a disintegrating
legal precedent, they were told to do their duty. 117 Judge Pal, by contrast,
attempted to “rupture” the trial, to expose the system on which it rested by
attacking it. But his was not a Jacques Vergès-style frontal and sustained
attack on the foundations of the trial,118 he ruptured the bench internally
116
See for example, Gao Qunshu’s Dōngjīng Shěnpàn (2006) (film).
117
See Ann Trotter, “Justice Northcroft”, in Yuki Tanaka, Tim McCormack and Gerry
Simpson (eds.), Beyond Victor’s Justice? The Tokyo War Crimes Trials Revisited, Nijhoff,
Leiden, 2011, pp. 81, 88.
118
Described in depth by Koskenniemi, 2002, p. 26, see supra note 92.
during the course of the trial and then the legacy of the trial ex post facto
through an unread judgment delivered at its end.
21.5. A Bad Trial for Good Ends?

Both Shklar and Mark Osiel argue that show trials for educative purposes
are morally defensible if they serve liberal ends and promote the rule of
law.119 The Tokyo Trial might thus be justified as an early step in the
global politics of resistance to the use of force by states and thus as a
legitimate show trial. But this is hindsight. The noble motive of general
suppression of the use of force is an attempt to appropriate the past by
modern peace advocates who are still some way from succeeding in doing
so.120 The trial is open to the criticism that it was used for instrumental
purposes to vindicate the victor’s position not justice, and thus does not
possess Hannah Arendt’s necessary condition for a trial. 121 Does this
mean it has passed the threshold and is a show trial?
A counterview is that the Tokyo Trial was not a success as a show
trial. As the monolithic goals of the trial slowly disintegrated under the
weight of its own assumptions, some justice and some historical accuracy
emerged. The trial was premised on the legality of crimes against peace
and this placed irresistible pressure on the judges to manipulate
procedural and evidential rules to ensure the trial did not completely
disintegrate. Ironically, the very fact that the trial permitted this debate
indicates that its authors did not have it under sufficient control and
immanent within its design was the danger of moral and legal confusion.
The off-message voices from within the trial are those we hear most
loudly today. And paradoxically the disintegrative tendencies from a
show trial perspective, i.e. those tendencies that tended to undermine the
predictability of the trial’s conclusion and its role as an exhibition, are
integrative tendencies when it comes to the validity of the trial as a legal
process.
119
Shklar, 1986, p. 145, see supra note 16; Mark Osiel, Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory
and the Law, Transaction Publishers, New Jersey, 1997, p. 65.
120
The author is among them. See Neil Boister, “New Zealand and the ‘Supreme International
Crime’: Vengeance or Hypocrisy?”, in New Zealand Yearbook of International Law 2008,
International Law Group, Christchurch, 2010, pp. 137–54.
121
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Viking, New
York, 1963, p. 232.
21.6. Fractured Foundations

The Tokyo Trial’s ruptures revealed the underlying operations of the
prevailing global order. The notion that Japan had broken with
civilisation, popular with both prosecution and bench, suggested that
civilisation was the prevailing order. The trial’s greatest failure was its
attempt to disguise the fact that the prevailing order itself had produced
the armed conflicts in East and Southeast Asia. But the trial revealed the
real nature of international society; not built on clear normative principles
of right and wrong, but on power. Unsurprisingly, those tensions still
prevail. Tokyo did not put to rest the events of the 15-year war. It is not
certain that trials of this kind can ever bring on the sleep of history – but
they can serve to expose the violence at the heart of much of international
legal order and undermine the legitimacy of that order. That is, perhaps,
why international criminal trials – particularly of crimes against peace –
are so risky, and a poor subject for a good show.
Whether a trial for the crime of aggression under the International
Criminal Court Statute will be able to break from this rather dubious
historical foundation is an open question. Koskenniemi suggests implicitly
that to do so it would have to be conducted in a way that involves a
willingness to actively interact with the past and be open to all truth no
matter how uncomfortable, including truths about one’s own society and
its role and implication in events.122 What this episode in the history of
international criminal law teaches is that the crime of aggression will have
to escape the symbolic trap of being used for the attribution of blame by
one side on the other if it is to be valid. To begin on the presumption of
moral and political rectitude, and to try to show this to the Japanese and
the rest of the world, as was done at Tokyo, will lead inevitably to failure
and the birth and reinforcement of a countervailing truth which the trial
will actually fuel.
122
Koskenniemi, 2002, p. 34, see supra note 92.
FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014):
Morten Bergsmo, CHEAH Wui Ling and YI Ping (editors)
The historical origins of international criminal law go beyond the key trials of Nuremberg and
Tokyo but remain a topic that has not received comprehensive and systematic treatment. This
anthology aims to address this lacuna by examining trials, proceedings, legal instruments and
publications that may be said to be the building blocks of contemporary international criminal
law. It aspires to generate new knowledge, broaden the common hinterland to international
criminal law, and further develop this relatively young discipline of international law.
The anthology and research project also seek to question our fundamental assumptions of
international criminal law by going beyond the geographical, cultural, and temporal limits set by
the traditional narratives of its history, and by questioning the roots of its substance, process,
and institutions. Ultimately, the editors hope to raise awareness and generate further discus-
sion about the historical and intellectual origins of international criminal law and its social
function.
The contributions to the three volumes of this study bring together experts with different
professional and disciplinary expertise, from diverse continents and legal traditions. Volume 2
comprises contributions by prominent international lawyers and researchers including Profes-
sor LING Yan, Professor Neil Boister, Professor Nina H.B. Jørgensen, Professor Ditlev Tamm
and Professor Mark Drumbl.
ISBN 978-82-93081-13-5
Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher

E-mail: info@toaep.org
URL: www.toaep.org

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Historical Origins of International

Criminal Law: Volume 2

© Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher, 2014. All rights are reserved.

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 3

initially took the form of self-criticism. Justice Radhabinod Pal famously

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 4

21.2. The Characteristics of a Show Trial

21.2.1. The Predictability of the Outcome

561–95; Tor Krever, “International Criminal Law: An Ideology Critique”, in Leiden

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 5

denial of counsel; insufficient evidentiary rights broken down into the

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 6

21.2.2. Exhibition for an External Target Audience

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 7

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 8

whose unmasking was accompanied by popular legitimacy. 29 However,

21.2.3. Fantasies of Crime and Punishment

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 9

21.2.4. The Distinction between Victor’s Justice and Show Trials

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 10

a foreign jurisdiction in defiance of established law and

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 11

21.3. Show Time at Tokyo?

21.3.2. Executive Interference

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 12

associates.45 There is a great deal of evidence of the heavy hand of the US

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 13

politically disposable opponents 52 embodying something greater than

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 14

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 15

21.3.3. Procedural Irregularity

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 16

the presence of counsel.69 Although Article 9(c) of the Charter guaranteed

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 17

Insufficient proof requirements are another of Peterson’s

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 18

Many of these procedural and evidential irregularities were used to

21.3.4. Unrepresentative and Biased Judges

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 19

whose daughter had been interned by the Japanese in the Philippines. 87

21.3.5. A Trial of Aggression

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 20

this element of the Nuremberg idiom 92 relentlessly. One of the

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 21

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 22

prosecution (Chief Prosecutor Keenan in particular) and among those

21.3.6. Collective versus Individual Responsibility

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 23

rather than individual culpability device.104 It was an elaboration of the

Measure of the Crime of Aggression?”, in Journal of International Criminal Justice, 2010,

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 24

individuals excused the Japanese public collectively and they in turn

21.3.7. Common Criminality

21.3.8. The Tokyo Trial: A “B Movie”?

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 25

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 26

21.4. Allied Players in a Tainted Trial

FICHL Publication Series No. 21 (2014) – page 27

21.5. A Bad Trial for Good Ends?