| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Kei Ushimura. Beyond the "Judgment of Civilization": The Intellectual Legacy of the Japanese War Crimes Trials, 1946–1949. (LTCB International Library, number 14.) Translated by Steven J. Ericson. Tokyo: International House of Japan. 2003. Pp. xvii, 336.

This is a subtle book about a subject generally presented in the broadest of strokes, which may explain why the original Japanese edition won a major prize. Kei Ushimura begins by rejecting the stance that "civilization" was the plaintiff in the Tokyo War Crimes Trial and traces the history of that assertion. Not only did the lead prosecutor open the trial with that claim but Maruyama Masao, a prominent postwar Japanese intellectual, also concurred in a famous essay that decried the "dwarfishness" of wartime leaders for their failure to accept responsibility for their crimes. Through a close reading of the trial transcripts and other documents, Ushimura shows that Maruyama systematically ignored statements in which the defendants did acknowledge responsibility. Moreover, contrary to Maruyama's assertions, the Japanese leaders acted much as did their counterparts on trial at Nuremberg. Ushimura's message is that both the prosecutors and Japanese leftists did Japan a disservice by portraying the trial in such a black-and-white way, making it easier for other Japanese then and since to reject the exercise as hypocritical victor's justice.

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