BOOK: Kerstin VON LINGEN, ed., Transcultural Justice at the Tokyo Tribunal - The Allied Struggle for Justice, 1946-48 [History of Warfare] (Leiden: Brill, 2018). ISBN 978-90-04-35997-0, € 138.00

(Source: Brill)

Brill has just published a new book on the Tokyo Tribunal from a transcultural perspective.

ABOUT

While the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg has been at the centre of scholarly attention, the Tokyo Tribunal has for decades been largely neglected. This is surprising insofar as this tribunal was a well-organized Allied endeavour and prefigured the international courts and tribunals of our day. Eleven national teams were sent to Tokyo between 1946 and 1948 to bring about justice in the aftermath of the Pacific War. This volume offers an innovative approach to the Tokyo Tribunal as an arena of transcultural engagement. It contextualizes legal agents as products of transnational forces, constituted through dialogues about legal concepts and processes of faction-making. The endeavour was challenged by different national policies, divergent legal traditions, and varying cultural perceptions of the task ahead. Contributors are Milinda Banerjee, Anja Bihler, Neil Boister, David M. Crowe, Kerstin von Lingen, Narrelle Morris, Hitoshi Nagai, Valentyna Polunina, Ann-Sophie Schoepfel, Lisette Schouten, James Burnham Sedgwick, Yuki Takatori and Urs Matthias Zachmann.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Notes for Readers

List of Contributors Introduction  

 Kerstin von Lingen 1 Building Blocs: Communities of Dissent, Manufactured Majorities and International Judgment in Tokyo   James Burnham Sedgwick

2 Sir William Webb and Beyond: Australia and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East   Narrelle Morris

3 MacArthur, Keenan and the American Quest for Justice at the IMTFE   David M. Crowe

4 On a ‘Sacred Mission’: Representing the Republic of China at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East   Anja Bihler

5 Managing Justice: Judge William Patrick, Prosecutor Arthur ­Comyns-Carr and British Approaches to the IMTFE   Kerstin von Lingen

6 The Soviets at Tokyo: International Justice at the Dawn of the Cold War   Valentyna Polunina

7 ‘Little Useful Purpose Would be Served by Canada’: Ottawa’s View of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial   Yuki Takatori Illustrations

8 New Zealand’s Approach to International Criminal Law from Versailles to Tokyo   Neil Boister

9 Burdened by the ‘Shadow of War’: Justice Jaranilla and the Tokyo Trial   Hitoshi Nagai

10 Defending French National Interests? The Quai d’Orsay, Ambassador Zinovy Peshkoff, Justice Henri Bernard and the Tokyo Trial   Ann-Sophie Schoepfel

11 In the Footsteps of Grotius: The Netherlands and Its Representation at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 1945-1948   Lisette Schouten

12 India’s ‘Subaltern Elites’ and the Tokyo Trial   Milinda Banerjee

13 Loser’s Justice: The Tokyo Trial from the Perspective of the Japanese Defence Counsels and the Legal Community   Urs Matthias Zachmann

Appendix: The Composition of the Court at Tokyo Index

More information on the publisher’s website