80 Years of Hiroshima – Tokyo processes: Imperialism in court

Three months after the German surrender, the Pacific was still fighting. Japan had long since lost the war at that time, but a heated militaristic mood ensured that the Japanese troops continued to fight. Only after the atomic bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was it over with the Japanese resistance. A few days after the devastating attacks, which themselves represented a terrible war crime, Emperor Hirohito was aimed at his subjects to declare the war. For most Japanese, it was the first time that they heard their head of state speak – the “tennō” staged itself as a divine figure.

US author Gary Bass, who teaches international politics and conflict research in Princeton, reconstructed the first three years after the end of the war in Japan in a 1080-page book. His particular interest applies to the war criminal processes, which were led against 28 Japanese military and politicians from April 1946. Similar to the Nuremberg processes, in which almost 200 high-ranking Nazi officials had been charged a few months earlier, Tokyo was also about making the war crimes committed by the axis powers and creating the foundations of an international criminal justice. For the first time, indictment points were negotiated, which international law had not known as a fact until then: “Preparation of a war of aggression” and “crimes against humanity”.

Compared to Nuremberg, however, the educational effect in Tokyo remained low. To date, the Japanese state has refused an official apology for committed war crimes. And in the Yasukuni shrine, the official memorial for war, the country still commemorates almost a thousand convicted war criminals. But why is it that the tribunal Tokyo ended very differently than the Nuremberg processes?

Japanese imperialism

The Japanese Empire raged hardly less brutally than its fascist allies in Europe in its sphere of influence, which was euphemistically referred to as the “East Asian sphere”. And there were also important similarities: the state religion, which was established in Japan in the middle of the 19th century, the “state-shintō”, propagated the ethnic “purity” of the people, the superiority of their own culture and militarism to enforce economic interests. Compared to the fascist movements in Germany or Italy, the Japanese state ideology was much more traditional. The focus of the state-shintō was the reconstruction of Japanese customs, and in contrast to Hitler or Mussolini, the Tennō, the imperial “leader” of the Japanese, was so divine that he did not speak directly to his subjects.

In addition, Japanese nationalism had an anti -colonial component. In view of the European colonial expansion, the country had isolated itself in the 1630s. It was only from the 1850s that the country’s elites relied on a modernization process, in which traditionalism and economic expansion urge connected to an independent form of imperialism.

From then on, however, it went surprisingly quickly: Japan occupied the island of Taiwan in 1895, and in 1899 was involved in the side of the European colonial powers in the bloody suppression of the Chinese boxer uprising, in 1905 Japan Korea became a protectorate. At the same time, the Japanese investments in Chinese Manchuria grew so quickly that a puppet state called Manchuko could be built in 1932. This catching up to the land was accompanied by a pressure on the right: After an attempt to coup, the military attempted the party rule in 1932 with a “government of national unity”.

In this respect, the Japanese World War II crimes can be interpreted as a logical consequence of an imperial project, which at the time of its greatest extent comprised 7.4 million square kilometers and reached from the Soviet border in the north to the island of Timor south of the equator. In Hollywood films, the abuse of allied prisoners of war is still being discussed, but Japanese militarism treated its Asian neighbors even more brutally. In China, the Japanese army pursued an uprising that was famous under the name “Three” (“kills everyone, burn everything, looted everything”) and ended up with 20 million Chines. Also terrible was the fate of up to 200,000 forced prostitutes, which the Japanese army kidnapped from Korea and Taiwan, among others, to military brothels.

Gary Bass sums up the approach of Japan in East Asia as follows: »In Singapore, the Japanese occupiers and Malays treated thousands of ethnic Chinese as racially inferior, arrested and killed, stood in› consolation ‹snake for enforced sex with caught Korean women, they beheader and placed their heads on bridges and Road the edge of the street as a warning. “

Justice in Tokyo?

But even if the Japanese’s colonial racism was in no way due to its European forerunners, the Tokyo’s war criminal tribunal did not really succeed in exposing those responsible. According to author Gary Bass, this was also due to the fact that the United States could not really decide what they wanted to see primarily – the Japanese attack on the USA or the crime crimes committed in Asia. This indecision was also reflected in the composition of the tribunal. In contrast to the Nuremberg processes, not only the four Allies with judges were represented in Tokyo, but they had tried an internationally compiled, eleven -member jury.

However, the selection was not particularly successful. “The Tokyo process was plagued by the problem of the imperies,” writes Bass. »Most judges came from colonial powers, who, in particular the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France and the Netherlands, but also the United States with their interests in Hawaii and the Philippines, were hated throughout Asia. The British influence on the judge’s bank was enlarged by the world empire because this white Probritical judge from Australia, Canada and New Zealand were sitting. In contrast, judges from the affected countries of Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam or Singapore had been dispensed with. (…) Even the late appointment of an Indian and a Filipino judge was a subsequent idea that was more than more likely to be more likely to be more likely to be more likely to be more likely to be more and the Americans than opposite Indians and Filipinos.

“The Tokioer process was plagued by the problem of the imperies at every turn.”

Gary Bass in »Tribunal in Tokio«

When presenting the procedure, bass succeeds in sorting the complex fabric. He skillfully interferes atmospheric descriptions, biographical passages and political analyzes. He makes it clear that personal deficits were also responsible for the failure of the processes. Chief bank lunger Joseph B. Keenan in particular does not get away well with bass. The former US Justice Minister was an old friend of President Harry Truman, but had “neither the format nor the intellect (…) of his Nuremberg colleague,” said Bass. “The beefy man (…) turned out to be sultry and ineffective, had no idea about Asia and suffered from an alcoholism that soon became a claping topic at the Court of Justice.”

At the end of the trial in November 1948, seven death penalties and 16 lifelong prison terms were imposed against generals and politicians – however, 13 were released prematurely in the course of the following decade. The court had fulfilled its function purely formally. But most observers rated the process as a failure. In the magazine Time It was said that when clarifying the question of whether these procedures stand for justice or only for the revenge of the winners, there was no progress. “

This was mainly due to the lack of unity among the judges and especially due to the minority vote by the Indian judge Radhabinod Pal, which refused to convict the Japanese with reference to European and US crimes. Pal was anything but a sympathizer of militarism. However, in view of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he questioned the legitimacy of a court used by the United States to judge human rights crimes.

Border of the liberal perspective

Incidentally, Gary Bass’ book negotiates a problem that is again highly topical today – namely the question of how emerging or what the Western competitors are to be assessed. While some demonize China and Russia as states, the supposedly never -for -existent crimes, the left -wing chauvinism of the two countries in the global south trivialized with reference to western crimes. The historical case of Japan shows that a state can be both easy: anti -west and imperialist.

But Gary Bass only discusses such questions. In the end, his perspective, which is characterized by normative liberalism, itself has ideological limits. Bass works carefully that the anti-Japanese racism of American actors made it easier for Japanese perpetrators to stage themselves as victims. And bass also discusses in detail that the United States prevented further enlightenment because they wanted to protect the Japanese emperor as an anti -communist ally. But this criticism rarely refers to structural relationships.

While bass explains the Soviet position in the war criminal processes – completely right – with the power interests of Stalinism, he always describes contradictions between political rhetoric and practice in the USA of the USA with personal mistakes. From a bass’ perspective, Washington was simply not consistent enough when implementing a universalist principles.

It would be interesting to discuss whether this decision does not have to be explained as “structurally” as in the case of the Soviet Union. For the United States, which were colonial power in the Philippines until 1946, it was about securing the economic and geopolitical space for the future. As soon as human rights came into conflict with these interests, they had to resign. The fact that the “democratic” imperialism ultimately hardly did less cruel than its authoritarian variant proved the Colonial and Imperial Wars of the Netherlands (in Indonesia), Great Britain (in Malaya), France and the USA (in Indochina). Conversely, one would have to ask whether the bloodthirsty Japanese imperialism was not simply an attempt to successfully copy bourgeois Europe.

Gary J. Bass: “Tribunal in Tokyo: The war criminal processes in Japan and the reorganization of Asia after 1945«, S. Fischer 2025, 1080 pages, born, € 48.