The Tokyo Trial Reshaped the Understanding of International Rule of Law

2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the victory in the World Anti-Fascist War. The two post-war international military tribunals, Nuremberg and Tokyo, inaugurated a new era of modern international rule of law. As a core event in the rebuilding of the post-war Asian order, the Tokyo Trial was not only a reckoning for Japanese militarist crimes but also a milestone in the international community's profound jurisprudential reflection on the issues of war and peace. In the long-dominant Western-centric narrative of international law, the significance of the Tokyo Trial has often been underestimated or even obscured. Today, in the face of the resurgence of unilateralism and hegemonic politics, re-excavating the historical significance of the Tokyo Trial has far-reaching implications for building a more inclusive international rule-of-law system.

2025年，世界迎来反法西斯战争胜利80周年。战后的纽伦堡与东京两大国际军事审判开启了现代国际法治的新纪元。作为战后亚洲秩序重建的核心事件，东京审判不仅是对日本军国主义罪行的清算，更是国际社会对战争与和平问题进行深刻法理反思的里程碑。在西方中心主义长期主导的国际法叙事中，东京审判的意义常被低估甚至遮蔽。今天，面对单边主义与霸权政治的抬头，重新挖掘东京审判的历史意义，对于构建更具包容性的国际法治体系具有深远影响。

From the Logic of Power to the Pursuit of Justice

从权力逻辑到正义追求

Traditional international law was long constrained by the logic of power politics. Seen from the historical context, Grotius, in the 17th century, put forward the theory of "unlimited right to war," whose purpose was not to end war, nor to seek a world made secure by peace. On the contrary, he sought a world made secure by war. Under this old paradigm of international law, the ideology of war realism flourished, which not only cloaked colonial expansion in a legal mantle but also made war an absolute attribute of national sovereignty. This conception of international law relegated China and other non-Western countries to a "barbaric world," indulging the expansionist logic of powerful states committing aggression under the guise of "civilization."

传统国际法长期受制于强权政治的逻辑。从历史语境来看，格劳秀斯在17世纪提出“无限制战争权”理论，其目的不是结束战争，也不寻求世界因为和平而安全。相反，他追求的是世界因为战争而安全。在这种国际法的旧范式下，战争现实主义思想兴盛，不仅为殖民扩张披上合法外衣，更使战争成为国家主权的绝对属性。这种国际法观将中国等非西方国家贬为“野蛮世界”，纵容了强国以“文明”之名行侵略之实的扩张逻辑。

The primary contribution of the Tokyo Trial, together with the Nuremberg Trial, was to declare, in the form of a judicial verdict, the end of the old international legal order. At the level of creating charges, the two trials creatively incorporated "crimes against peace" and "crimes against humanity" into the category of international law. Traditional international law only regulated the acts of war itself but was helpless against acts that harmed the fundamental interests of humanity, such as planning wars and systematic massacres. Through the judicial determination of crimes such as the September 18 Incident [1]1 The September 18 Incident (1931): A staged event by Japanese troops that served as a pretext for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, marking the beginning of Japan's full-scale aggression against China. and the Nanjing Massacre [2]2 The Nanjing Massacre (1937-1938): A mass murder, rape, and looting committed by Japanese troops in the then-capital of China, Nanjing, with hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers killed., the Tokyo Trial elevated the moral condemnation of war into legal sanctions, establishing the fundamental principle that "launching a war of aggression is a crime." This subversive reconstruction of the conception of the laws of war elevated international law from a "contract among states" to a "guardian of the common interests of humanity."

东京审判的首要贡献在于与纽伦堡审判一道，以司法判决的形式宣告了旧国际法秩序的终结。在罪名创设层面，两大审判创造性地将“反和平罪”“反人类罪”纳入国际法范畴。传统国际法仅规制战争行为本身，却对策划战争、系统性屠杀等危害人类根本利益的行为束手无策。东京审判通过对九一八事变、南京大屠杀等罪行的司法认定，将对战争的道德谴责上升为法律制裁，确立了“发动侵略战争即犯罪”的根本原则。这种对战争法观的颠覆性重构，使国际法从“国家间的契约”升华为“人类共同利益的守护者”。

To this day, voices still exist that belittle or even negate the legitimacy of the Tokyo Trial. However, as long as one delves into the essence of the principle of legality (nullum crimen sine lege), it is not difficult to find that this principle is intended to restrict the power to determine crimes and prevent the state from abusing criminal law to infringe on citizens' rights. Any country or human community, when faced with natural crimes such as murder, arson, robbery, and rape, does not need written law to clearly understand that the nature of such acts constitutes a crime, and aggressive war is undoubtedly the sum total of serious natural crimes. The world wars devastated the fundamental values of the international community—peace, security, and well-being—and also provided war crimes "with an international dimension, transforming them into crimes under international law." In this sense, if before World War II aggressive war as a crime was "having a name but no substance," then after World War II the two trials made it "both name and substance."

时至今日，仍有矮化甚至消解东京审判合法性的声音，但只要深入罪刑法定原则的本质，就不难发现，罪刑法定原则意在限制犯罪的认定权，防止国家滥用刑法侵害公民权利。任何一个国家和人类族群，在面对杀人、放火、抢劫、强奸等自然犯罪时，不需要借助成文法，都清楚此类行为的性质构成犯罪，而侵略战争无疑是严重的自然犯罪的总和。世界大战将国际社会的基础性价值——和平、安全和福祉破坏殆尽，也为战争犯罪“提供了一个国际的维度，使其转变为一种国际法项下的犯罪”。在这个意义上，如果二战之前侵略战争作为犯罪是“有名无实”，那么二战之后的两大审判则是“名实俱在”。

The two trials also thoroughly shattered the absolute myth of "state sovereign immunity" by holding war criminals such as Göring and Tojo Hideki personally responsible. The "principle of individual criminal responsibility" established by the trials, for the first time, translated the moral evaluation of state conduct into concrete natural persons, freeing the attribution of war responsibility from the ambiguity of "collective responsibility." This breakthrough established the modern judicial norm of "individual culpability" for international criminal law.

两大审判还通过追究戈林、东条英机等战犯的个人责任，彻底打破了“国家主权豁免”的绝对化神话。审判确立的“个人刑事责任原则”，首次将对国家行为的道德评价落实到具体自然人，使战争责任的追究摆脱了“集体责任”的模糊性。这一突破为国际刑法确立了“罪责自负”的现代司法准则。

Disenchantment and Reconstruction of the Discourse System of Civilization

文明话语体系的祛魅与重构

International law in the 19th century was essentially a tool for legitimizing European colonial expansion. The West, using the "standard of civilization," relegated non-Western countries to "barbarism," excluded them from the "international community of civilization," and used this as a pretext to launch colonial wars, even glorifying them as "spreading civilization." The sovereignty of Asian countries was undermined under the rules of "gunboat diplomacy." This international law, built on the logic of realist power, was essentially a "rule of the strong," and countries such as China had long been its victims.

19世纪的国际法本质上是欧洲殖民扩张的合法化工具。西方以“文明标准”将非西方国家贬为“野蛮”，排斥于“国际文明共同体”之外，并以此为由发动殖民战争，甚至将殖民战争美化为“传播文明”。亚洲国家的主权在“炮舰外交”的规则下遭到破坏。这种建立在现实主义权力逻辑之上的国际法，本质上是“强者的游戏规则”，中国等国家曾长期沦为其牺牲品。

The Tokyo Trial unveiled the hypocritical veil of this "discourse of civilization." The trial revealed a cruel reality: when international law becomes a tool of power games, so-called "civilization" is nothing but a fig leaf for the law of the jungle. In the Tokyo Trial, countries such as China, the Philippines, and India, once labeled "barbaric," became the subjects of the trial, while Japan, which had prided itself as a "civilized top student," became the defendant. This historic reversal of roles thoroughly exposed the hypocrisy of the "theory of civilizational hierarchy."

东京审判揭开了这种“文明话语”的虚伪面纱。审判揭示出一个残酷现实：当国际法沦为权力博弈的工具时，所谓“文明”不过是弱肉强食的遮羞布。东京审判中，曾被贴上“野蛮”标签的中国、菲律宾、印度等国家成为审判主体，而自诩“文明优等生”的日本却沦为被告。这种角色的历史性反转，彻底揭露了“文明等级论”的虚伪性。

The Tokyo Trial promoted the rational return of civilizational values. Amidst the ruins, natural law thinking revived in international law. The birth of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the initial construction of the international criminal justice system marked the replacement of power worship by common human values such as "justice" and "humanity" as the spiritual core of international law. The Tokyo Trial proved that the true measure of civilization is not territory, race, or ideology, but universal respect for the rights to life and dignity. This value turn was like parting the clouds to see the sun, liberating international law from the shackles of the "theory of civilizational hierarchy" and moving toward a new realm of "a community with a shared future for mankind."

东京审判推动了文明价值的理性回归。废墟之上，自然法思想在国际法中重新焕发生机。《世界人权宣言》的诞生、国际刑事司法体系的初步构建，标志着“正义”“人道”等人类共同价值取代权力崇拜，成为国际法的精神内核。东京审判证明，文明的真正尺度不是地域、种族或意识形态，而是对生命权、尊严权的普遍尊重。这种价值转向犹如拨云见日，使国际法从“文明等级论”的桎梏中解放出来，迈向“人类命运共同体”的新境界。

From Historical Reckoning to the Construction of a Regional Rule-of-Law Community

从历史清算到区域法治共同体构建

The Asian factor in the Tokyo Trial has irreplaceable historical significance and profoundly shaped the just character of this international judicial practice. As the largest victim of the war, China, the Philippines, India, and other Asian countries participated in the dual capacity of victim states and judging states, fundamentally justifying the legality and legitimacy of the trial. China, the first country to suffer Japanese aggression, with its enormous sacrifice in the 14-year War of Resistance [3]3 The 14-year War of Resistance: The period from 1931 to 1945 during which China fought against Japanese aggression, often called the 14-year War of Resistance (starting from the September 18 Incident) in Chinese historiography., provided the core legal basis for the trial—the aggressive acts of Japan starting from the September 18 Incident in 1931 were brought within the jurisdiction of the tribunal, breaking the one-sided view held by some countries that "war responsibility began in 1941." The three major atrocities of the Japanese military—the Nanjing Massacre, the Bataan Death March, and the Manila Massacre [4]4 The Bataan Death March (1942) and the Manila Massacre (1945): Two major atrocities committed by the Japanese military against Allied prisoners of war and civilians in the Philippines.—were written into the judgment, becoming key evidence for the tribunal's determination of war crimes.

亚洲因素在东京审判中具有不可替代的历史意义，深刻塑造了这场国际司法实践的正义底色。作为战争最大受害方，中国、菲律宾、印度等亚洲国家以受害国与审判国的双重身份参与，从根本上证成了审判的合法性与正当性。中国作为最早遭受日本侵略的国家，以长达14年抗战的巨大牺牲，为审判提供了核心法理依据——日本自1931年九一八事变开始的侵略行径被纳入法庭管辖权范围，打破了部分国家主张的“战争责任始于1941年”的片面认知。南京大屠杀、巴丹死亡行军、马尼拉大屠杀作为日军三大战争暴行写入判决书，成为法庭认定战争罪的关键例证。

The judicial contributions of Asian judges are also not to be overlooked. Mei Ju-ao [5]5 Mei Ju-ao (梅汝璈): The Chinese judge at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, known for his insistence on legal principles and his contribution to the drafting of the judgment., the Chinese judge, as one of the majority judges of the tribunal, consistently adhered to legal principles throughout the trial. He was responsible for drafting Chapter V of the judgment, "Japan's Aggression Against China," contributing more than 200 pages, over 100,000 characters, to the only effective judgment of the trial, thus upholding the authority of the trial and protecting China's interests, earning the appreciation and respect of the world. The Philippine judge, Delfín Jaranilla [6]6 Delfín Jaranilla (哈那尼拉): The Philippine judge at the Tokyo Trial., gave full affirmation to the tribunal's charter and jurisdiction in the trial. The Indian judge, Radhabinod Pal [7]7 Radhabinod Pal (帕尔): The Indian judge at the Tokyo Trial, famous for his dissenting opinion that argued the trial was a form of victor's justice., although known for his dissenting opinion against the majority verdict, criticized in his dissenting opinion the double standards in Western colonial history: "If measured by the same yardstick, the atrocities committed by European colonizers in Asia should also be put on trial." These voices broke the Western monopoly on international justice and compelled the international community to face the legal subjectivity of non-Western countries.

亚洲法官的司法贡献也不容忽视。作为法庭多数派法官之一，中国法官梅汝璈在审判过程中始终坚守法律原则。他负责判决书第五章“日本对华侵略”的起草工作，为审判唯一的生效判决贡献了200多页长达10余万字的判决书章节，维护了审判的权威和中国的利益，赢得了世界的赞赏与尊重。菲律宾法官哈那尼拉在审判中对法庭宪章及法庭管辖权给予全面肯定。印度法官帕尔虽以反对多数判决闻名，但其异议书批判了西方殖民历史中的双重标准：“若以同一尺度衡量，欧洲殖民者在亚洲的暴行同样应受审判。”这些声音打破了西方对国际司法的垄断，迫使国际社会正视非西方国家的法律主体地位。

The Tokyo Trial also gave rise to a collective pursuit of the rule of law in East Asia. In 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco [8]8 The Treaty of San Francisco (1951): The peace treaty between Japan and most of the Allied powers, which formally ended the state of war. was signed, with Japan promising to return to the international community on the condition of accepting the verdict of the Tokyo Trial. The formulation of Article 9 of Japan's post-war Peace Constitution, which "renounces war," was a direct response to the spirit of the Tokyo Trial. Even more far-reaching, the Tokyo Trial and its subsequent Asia-Pacific trials, by exposing systematic crimes such as the Japanese military's "comfort women" system [9]9 The "comfort women" system: The system of military sexual slavery imposed by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, involving the forced prostitution of and forced labor, stimulated the consciousness of rights in Asian civil society. The victim litigation movements across Asia since the 1990s are a contemporary continuation of the spirit of the Tokyo Trial.

东京审判还催生了东亚地区对法治的集体追求。1951年《旧金山和约》签订，日本承诺重回国际社会的前提是接受东京审判的判决结果。战后日本和平宪法第九条“放弃战争权”的制定，正是对东京审判精神的直接回应。更为深远的是，东京审判及其后续的亚太审判通过揭露日军“慰安妇”制度、强征劳工等系统性犯罪，激发了亚洲民间社会的权利意识。20世纪90年代以来，亚洲各地的受害者诉讼运动，正是东京审判精神在当代的延续。

Toward a Pluralistic and Symbiotic International Rule of Law

迈向多元共生的国际法治

To this day, the historical value of the Tokyo Trial has not been fully recognized, which is closely related to the discourse monopoly of Western-centrism. From the very naming of the "International Military Tribunal for the Far East" [10], it can be seen that the geographical cognitive framework centered on Europe still tacitly influences the international community's positioning of this trial. Behind this cognitive bias lies the long-standing deliberate neglect of non-Western experience in the Western-dominated narrative of international law.

时至今日，东京审判的历史价值仍未得到充分认知，这与西方中心主义的话语垄断密切相关。从“远东国际军事审判”的命名即可看出，以欧洲为原点的地理认知框架，依然潜移默化地影响着国际社会对这场审判的定位。这种认知偏差背后，是长期以来西方主导的国际法叙事对非西方经验的刻意忽视。

However, the truth of history will not change because of discursive bias. The fact that the Nuremberg Trial and the Tokyo Trial governed Europe and Asia in parallel and complemented each other proves that international law is not a "patent of Western civilization" but the crystallization of the common wisdom of humanity. Transcending the limitations of geography and ideology, it is not difficult to see that the values promoted by this trial—curbing war violence through legal means, healing civilizational wounds through just judgment, and promoting progress in the international order through institutional innovation—belong not only to East Asia but to all of humanity.

然而，历史的真相不会因话语偏见而改变。纽伦堡审判与东京审判欧亚并治、交相辉映的事实证明，国际法不是“西方文明的专利”，而是人类共同智慧的结晶。超越地域与意识形态的局限不难发现，这场审判所弘扬的以法治手段遏制战争暴力，以正义审判修复文明创伤，以制度创新推动国际秩序进步的价值不仅属于东亚，更属于全人类。

Amidst the changes unseen in a century in the world, revisiting the rule-of-law spirit of the Tokyo Trial has special significance. Currently, the international community is facing challenges such as rising unilateralism and intensifying geopolitical conflicts, while the resurgence of realist power politics threatens the hard-won peace order. At such a historical moment, we need more than ever to draw on the intellectual legacy of the Tokyo Trial, uphold the value attribute of international law, and refuse to allow it to be alienated into a tool of power politics. We must promote the development of international rule of law in a fairer and more inclusive direction, so that justice is no longer partial because of a state's strength or weakness.

在世界百年未有之大变局下，重温东京审判的法治精神具有特殊意义。当前，国际社会正面临单边主义抬头、地缘冲突加剧等挑战，现实主义权力政治的回潮威胁着来之不易的和平秩序。在这样的历史时刻，我们更需要汲取东京审判的思想遗产，坚守国际法的价值属性，拒绝将其异化为强权政治的工具。推动国际法治向更加公平、包容的方向发展，让正义不再因国家强弱而有所偏废。

From the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials to the development of the United Nations over the past 80 years, humanity's pursuit of international rule of law has never ceased. The Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials sowed the seeds of the rule of law in the ruins of war, proving through just judgment that even in the darkest moments, humanity can rebuild order with reason and conscience. This faith in the rule of law is the spiritual driving force that enables us to traverse the fog of history and move toward lasting peace. Only by taking history as a mirror, continuously deepening the understanding of the value of the Tokyo Trial, and firmly defending the international system with the United Nations at its core and the international order based on international law, can we ultimately realize the eternal ideal of "using law to stop war and using law to foster peace."

从纽伦堡审判和东京审判到联合国80年来的发展，人类追求国际法治的脚步从未停歇。纽伦堡审判和东京审判在战争的废墟上播下了法治的种子，用正义的审判证明即使在最黑暗的时刻，人类也能凭借理性与良知重建秩序。这种对法治的信仰，正是我们穿越历史迷雾、迈向持久和平的精神动力。唯有以历史为镜，不断深化对东京审判价值的认知，坚定捍卫以联合国为核心的国际体系、以国际法为基础的国际秩序，方能最终实现“以法止战，以法育和”的永恒理想。

(The author is an associate research fellow at the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.)

（作者系中国社会科学院法学研究所副研究员）

Online editor: Tongxin

网络编辑：同心