The twenty-two chapters of this book address familiar but under-researched topics of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial of May 1946 to November 1948, and reaffirm their relevance to current international criminal law and politics. Twenty-five academics and jurists with mostly Australian and Japanese backgrounds authored its eight thematic parts. “Forgotten Crimes” occupies the first half of the volume, which is divided into three subparts: “China and Korea”; “Comfort Women”; and “Atomic Bombs, Saturation Bombing and the Illicit Drug Trade”. Topics addressed in the other parts include “The Accused”, “The Judges”, and “The Proceedings”.

Sir Gerald Brennan's Forward introduces the sensitivity of the human condition of judges and the accused. Of the trial's eleven justices appointed by MacArthur, the book profiles five. Their strained relations derived from differences in judicial approaches, personal and professional limitations, and framed contests in substance and procedure. The Dissenting Opinion of Justice Pal, a positivist, challenged the Tribunal's jurisdiction. He questioned the retroactivity of crimes against peace and humanity, and posited that victor's justice does not entitle victors to legislate international law, as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East Charter mandated, but requires that they follow the rule of law. Nevertheless, President (Sir William) Webb's Separate Opinion observed that international law is guided by both natural law and positive law, not by “rigid positivism”.

Strategically, the Tokyo Charter's inclusion of “Crimes against Peace” provided the basis for the criminalization of aggression by reference to the Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928, while the Charter, nevertheless, excluded an express definition of a “war of aggression”. This framework, thus, overcame objections on the basis of nullum crimen sine lege (no crime can be committed without a previously established penal law). However, it lacked the required specificity in the provisions for the crime, a principle within the doctrine of strict legality that is necessary for conviction of a crime. A specific definition of aggression was eventually drafted at the Kampala Conference of June 2010 concerning the ICC's Rome Statute Article 5(d). Likewise, conspiracy to conduct aggression was criminalized but was left undefined in the Charter, tempting the Tribunal to “look behind the Charter” to create law. Initiatives in determining limits of jurisdiction form another of the Trial's legacies in shaping modern international criminal law. These themes further inform the enduring debate on natural law and positivism.

Following the conclusion of the Trial, the Japanese government abandoned its earlier agreement to enforce the Tribunal's sentences and to prosecute and punish other war criminals, and commuted the Tribunal's sentences. Such conduct invited criticism both from those decrying what they perceived to be insufficient punishment and impunity, and from those decrying the Trial's unjust prosecution of crimes against peace and aggression as evidence of victor's justice. The modest effort of the Tribunal's prosecution team, MacArthur's political need for an uneventful occupation of Japan overriding legal arguments favouring prosecution of the Emperor, and lack of legal accountability for the alleged criminal conduct on the part of the Western powers, all exacerbated and are illustrative of a broader absence of conviction to seek complete justice. The ensuing vacuum in Japan's national sentiment became backfilled with historical revisionism, whose champions and detractors construed Japan's conduct as, respectively, imitating Western imperialism and resisting it.

The outcome of the Trial frames the debate between its achievement of victor's justice, as perceived by both the Allied Powers and Japan, albeit from opposite perspectives, and expanding a search for humanity's justice that lies beyond victor's justice. That search serves the victims of the Asia Pacific war, including Australia, China, Korea, and other Asian nations who had suffered the forgotten crimes of Japan's militarization and expansionism.

For example, the conduct of the Manchuria 731 Unit and five similar units, its superior Ishi Organization, and the Chief of General Staff of the Kwantung Army, as well as the Japanese medical profession, are investigated through extensive reference to archival sources. Their complicity, if not conspiracy, in biological experimentation on humans and trialling of bacteriological warfare are activities described as just as offensive as the use of nuclear weapons. The opaque character of the Ishi Organization and the basis of its selection of its victims obstructed the specificity required for criminal prosecution, and many individuals escaped indictment before the Tokyo Tribunal. Postwar, a primarily US appetite for scientific knowledge and results of bacteriological warfare overrode the need for prosecution, leading to immunities being granted in a number of cases. Breach of Command Responsibility, occurring at the highest level and having been invoked earlier (February 1946) concerning Yamashita, were also ignored.

Justice eluded China's civilian victims of Japan's military operations, often on the basis of finer points of law. Evidence of justice remains scarce, whether regarding Japan's biological operations in Manchuria, Nomonhan, or Chongqing, “conventional” military operations (not that Nanjing's atrocities are “conventional”), or forced labour. The Tribunal prosecuted crimes against peace and war crimes more robustly than crimes against humanity, limiting its intended cathartic effects. Financial compensation for these crimes and the consequences of unexploded chemical ordnance throughout China remain unsettled, likewise the indictment of war criminals.

Koreans, as subjects of Japan's colonial rule of 1910 to 1945, were victimized, initially as subjects of an expansionist Japanese empire, although colonial occupation constitutes neither a war crime nor a crime against humanity. However, Japan's later perpetration of such crimes was evidenced by enforced mobilization of Koreans as comfort women, soldiers, and low-ranking guards of Japan's prisoners of war, whose status were as civilian employees. Despite being victims of Japan's criminal conduct, the latter were, nevertheless, subsequently convicted of war crimes by the five Allied Powers’ national courts on the basis of their service to the Imperial Japanese Army, and having thus owed allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. They were socially stigmatized and remain uncompensated.

The book's structure is coherent, its archival research impeccable, and its content comprehensive. The editors have succeeded in attracting contributors whose subject matter authority matches their own. The volume will assist those requiring fresh perspectives and new sources in researching these cross-cutting themes.