The Tokyo Trial (review)

The Potsdam Declaration, issued on 26 July 1945 by Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) offered the Japanese government two alternatives: "full prompt and utter destruction" or surrender. If the latter, Article 10 provided that "We do not intend that the Japanese be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners." The International Military Tribunal Far East, intended to administer stern justice, was formally established on 19 January 1946 and consisted of eleven judges from Australia (which supplied the Chief Justice), Canada, China, France, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union, and the U.S. This film depicts the trial of eighty Class A war criminal suspects from the point of view of Dr. Mei Ru'ao, the Chinese judge on the Court, and focuses on those crimes directly affecting China: the 1928 assassination of warlord Zhang Zuolin, the 1931 invasion of Manchuria and subsequent installation of the puppet emperor Henry Puyi, the invasion of China proper, and the Rape of Nanking. Rare documentary footage captures all these events and is used to highlight the court-room battle between Joseph Keenan, the chief prosecutor, and Ichiro Kiyose, former premier Hideki Tojo's defense lawyer. The Japanese December 1941 attacks against European and U.S. colonial possessions, justified as a preemptive strike in response to the July 1941 oil embargo imposed by the U.S. (the source of 80% of Japan's POL), receive only passing mention. The war crimes segments of the film seem to be historically accurate, although a dramatic scene in which the tribunal votes on the death penalty is probably fictional. The judges were sworn not to reveal their votes; there are no English language descriptions of the voting process, and Chief Defense Counsel Ben Bruce Blakeney claimed in a memo to General MacArthur that "a source of unquestionable reliability" had told him that less than a majority of the Tribunal favored the death penalty. The film has some value as a historical narrative, dramatizing for history students a Chinese perspective of the run-up to World War II. It also has contemporary relevance, in the context of the U.S. refusal to participate in the International Criminal Court and, surprisingly, makes no effort to demonize the Nationalist government which Dr. Mei represented. In a course devoted to films as propaganda it would be particularly useful, balancing two biased Japanese films: Masaki Kobayashi's The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (1983) which compared Japan's behavior with that of the U.S., particularly in Vietnam, and Shunya Ito's Pride (1998), which portrays Tojo as a patriot.

The film's production values are remarkable: excellent camera work, an appropriate musical score, and well-crafted sets and costumes serve to showcase a superior international cast. However, there are flaws: Dr. Mei's court room experiences are intertwined with a confusing plot in which a Chinese reporter becomes involves with a Japanese girl, her brother, a former soldier who had served in China, and a distraught teenager seeking revenge on the Chinese. The blood-stained operatic conclusion to their story detracts from the judicial theme. The English subtitles are a major distraction. The judicial scenes were filmed using actors (including Dr. Mei's character) who speak colloquial English and their voices can be heard on the sound track. Inexplicably, their dialogue was apparently translated into Mandarin, then badly retranslated into English for the subtitles, so that what one hears does not match what one reads. Overcoming this deficiency will be a challenge to the instructor and the class. However, the film is worth examining for its potential use in the class room.