JAPAN- Understanding Tokyo Trial

Tokyo Trial was the joint legal tribunal that was set up after the 2nd world war to prosecute and legally punish the Japanese war criminals for the war crimes committed by the Japanese government and military. It was formed on the basis of the Nuremberg tribunal which was created to prosecute and punish German war criminals after the 2nd world war.

On November 4, 1948, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East, usually referred to as the Tokyo Tribunal, issued its verdicts. After 31 months and more than 800 court sessions, the trial of 25 major Japanese leaders concluded. On November 12, seven death sentences were handed down, 16 were condemned to life imprisonment, one to 20 years, and another to seven years.

The Tokyo trial was set up by the winner nations for multiple reasons:

1) To give legitimacy to the controversial Nuremberg trial.

2) Act like very law-abiding nations that would punish war criminals legally.

3) To highlight Japan's crimes to justify the atomic bombing.

4) Break the reputation of the Japanese emperor and military commanders by tying them as normal people.

In this trial, an Indian judge Radha Binod Pal was also included so that the tribunal look very valid and that adding a judge from a colony nation will give more legitimacy to the tribunal. Also, it would represent that colonies are also given equal rights.

The majority of judges convicted the Japanese military of war crimes but Radha Vinod Pal strongly opposed the judgments. He was of the strong opinion that the Japanese did not do anything wrong other than what has been a conventional way of war. When senior military commanders were punished for crimes called "against humanity", Justice Pal opposed saying war itself could be wrong but fighting wars cannot be called war against humanity for one country and war for humanity for victor countries. War against humanity was the most serious charge in the trial and Justice Pal wanted that this clause removed from the judgments. 

It is also important to note that after Japan opened its border in the 1860s, it realized that technology has advanced a lot and Japan need to catch up with the west. So, Japan started following the West in a lot of ways like industrialization and developing a strong military. But since Japan did not have many resources as it was a small island nation, it also realized that colonialism is a way to grow stronger and get resources from other countries to industrialize its own country. Since all western countries were colonizing smaller countries, Japan also realized the importance of colonization. But by the time, Japan started attacking other countries to colonize them, the west had started realizing that colonizing was wrong, and also, colony nations like India were strongly resenting anti-colonial sentiments. Thus, when Japan started colonizing China and other smaller Asian nations, the entire world looked at Japan with angry sentiments. But as Japan had just opened up its borders and started its development, it ignored the global sentiments and carried out wars. Thus, to completely blame Japan for wars and crimes against humanity was not something Justice Pal agreed to. Justice Pal could not be removed even though few other judges wanted to remove him, as that would undermine the value of the tribunal. Justice Pal acquitted all undertrials.

In the trial, the emperor of Japan was not tried or called out even once. There were 2 reasons for this. The Japanese military commanders were asked if they followed the Emperor's orders to commit such war crimes or did they did the crimes on their own.

The military commanders were in the dilemma that if they say that they followed Emperor's order to kill, that would mean they are putting the blame for crimes on Emperor to save themselves and that would be a betrayal to Emperor. And if they say that they were not following Emperor's order but committed the crimes on their own, that would again be a betrayal of the Emperor as his orders were to be only followed and nothing apart from that should be done. One more reason the Emperor was not tried was that the Western powers wanted to use the Emperor's authority to keep the Japanese society in check and to use the Emperor to make Japanese society move towards peace and development as they knew everybody would follow what the Emperor would say.

A lot of military commanders were sent to jail but most of them were released after a few years. 

Inputs are taken from https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/justice-radhabinod-pal-tokyo-war-crimes-trial, Sidharth Echelon, Tokyo trial, Netflix, Youtube, and various other sources.