[Shanghai Daily]Shanghai-published book tells story of Tokyo Trial[图]

SHANGHAI Jiao Tong University Press released a book about the Tokyo Trial yesterday to mark the 80th year of the start of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.   

The book “The Tokyo Trial: For World Peace” details the process of the trial and its historical significance, as well as providing opinions from related parties.   

The book, which has about 380 pages, contains both words and pictures.   

An English edition is also being prepared under an agreement signed with the international publisher Springer Nature.   

“The book is important for defending the results of the Tokyo Trial as people in the world now actually do not know much about the history,” said Cheng Zhaoqi, the book’s author and head of the Center for Tokyo Trial Studies at the university, adding that Japan refused to accept the trial’s legitimacy.   

“The Tokyo Trial and the Nuremberg Trial were based on justice and laid foundation for the development of modern international criminal law and advancement of humanity,” said Wang Xin, a professor at the law school of Peking University, said at the book’s release ceremony.   

“I think the Japanese right-wingers are playing the political card by denying the history.”   

Xiang Longwan, whose father Xiang Zhejun was the chief China prosecutor at the Tokyo Trial, advocated at the release ceremony that China should include more information of the trial in its education system so that it could be better remembered.   

The Tokyo Trial, also referred to as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, opened on May 3, 1946, and tried high-ranking political and military leaders of Japan with conventional war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity for their actions during World War II.   

The trial lasted more than two and a half years, with 817 court sessions and 419 court witnesses. As many as 4,336 pieces of evidences were admitted, and 48,412 pages of trial transcripts were recorded.   

Twenty-five were found guilty of being Class A war criminals and seven were sentenced to death.