The Tokyo War Crimes Trial

About the Event: This book project is about the history, politics, and law of the Tokyo war crimes tribunal after World War II—the Asian counterpart to Nuremberg. From 1946 to 1948, the victorious Allies put on trial the senior leadership of Imperial Japan, including former prime ministers, generals, and admirals, for war crimes from Nanjing to Bataan. The project considers the Tokyo trial as a defining political event in the making of modern Asia, spanning the democratization of Japan, impending Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, decolonization in India and elsewhere, and the onset of the Cold War.

About the Speaker: Gary Bass, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton, is the author of The Blood Telegram (Knopf), Freedom’s Battle (Knopf), and Stay the Hand of Vengeance (Princeton). The Blood Telegram was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won book awards from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society, the Lionel Gelber Prize, the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature, and other awards. He has written articles for Ethics, International Security, Philosophy and Public Affairs, The Yale Journal of International Law, and other journals. A former reporter for The Economist, he writes often for The New York Times.