Tokyo Trial is a four-part miniseries that dramatises the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, available on Netflix. It was the equivalent of the more famous Nuremberg trials of Nazi warcrimes which by the time the IMTFE started were drawing to a close.

The series manages to reveal the tensions and realities of what, at the time, was a newish concept: that commanders and leaders can be held responsible for the actions of war. Is it possible to avoid the pejorative of “victor’s justice”? Is it justice to press charges against Japanese while ignoring actions of the Allies (such as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) that could be illegal by those very same charges? It’s difficult to avoid the impression that the Allies felt that morally they had to do something, but that realpolitik meant that, for instance, implicating the Emperor was arduously avoided.

For me, attempting fair justice for war crimes is always a rather plaintive task while war itself is legal. The IMTFE and the Nuremberg trials at least energised the process of defining and limiting what is and isn’t allowed and led to the creation of the International Criminal Court. Effective or not it make the statement that the world is watching, and this series is an interesting insight into that progression.