Eighty years after the opening of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, commonly known as the Tokyo Trials, China has achieved a major milestone in its long-term effort to domesticate the historical record of World War II justice. A collaborative team of scholars and linguists from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Zhejiang Yuexiu University of Foreign Languages has officially released the first complete Chinese translation of the tribunal's proceedings. This massive 40-volume set, spanning over 20,000 pages, represents more than a decade of meticulous academic labor and cross-disciplinary verification.
Historically, the official records of the Tokyo Trials—which totaled nearly 50,000 pages of original English transcripts—were primarily accessible to those proficient in English or Japanese. This linguistic wall created a significant barrier for Chinese researchers and the public, effectively delegating the interpretation of this seminal legal event to foreign scholarship. By bridging this gap, the new translation seeks to dismantle what Chinese state media describes as a "historical archive barrier," ensuring that the evidence of Japanese militarism is etched into the Chinese language and national consciousness.
The project was not merely a linguistic exercise but a complex forensic reconstruction. Editors noted that Chinese names and locations often appeared with erratic transliterations in the original English records; for instance, the name of a key witness to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident was spelled thirteen different ways. To ensure historical fidelity, the team employed a "rules-first" collaborative model, cross-referencing English and Japanese texts with Chinese historical archives to rectify decades-old errors and inconsistencies.
Central to the publication’s release is the focus on the "China factor"—the specific contributions of Chinese legal experts during the 1946–1948 trials. This includes the work of Prosecutor Xiang Zhejun and Judge Mei Ru’ao, whose roles are often overshadowed in Western accounts of the tribunal. Xiang Longwan, the son of the late prosecutor and a lead editor of the translation, emphasized that this work allows the Chinese people to witness the determination of their forebears who fought for justice on the international stage.
Beyond its academic value, the project serves a broader strategic purpose in the region’s ongoing "history wars." By providing a comprehensive and authoritative database for law, history, and international relations, Beijing is strengthening its hand against revisionist narratives. The release underscores a growing movement within China to cultivate its own "discourse power" regarding the post-war order, ensuring that the legal foundations of Japan’s defeat are accessible to a domestic audience and future generations of scholars.