Applying criminal liability retroactively without basis in international law violates the prohibition of ex post facto law. After regaining sovereignty, Japan abolished the judgments of the Tokyo Trial and unanimously rehabilitated convicted war criminals through legislation. This section exposes how key facts have been deliberately ignored to preserve the Tokyo Trial narrative.

2017-06-15
The following is a continuation of the previous section.
The Diet unanimously rehabilitated war criminals.
Attempting to retroactively prosecute crimes that are not based on any provision of international law violates the principle prohibiting ex post facto laws.
The prohibition of ex post facto law (non-retroactivity) means that laws must not be applied retroactively to acts committed before their enactment, and this was considered one of the criteria distinguishing civilized from uncivilized nations.
That “the law does not operate retroactively” is a fundamental principle of the rule of law, and violating it is not something a civilized nation should ever do.
In Japan’s feudal era, if a lord ordered an execution, it had to be carried out, but such a system cannot be regarded as civilized.
The “judgments” of the Tokyo Trial branded Japan as an aggressor nation and imposed sentences of seven executions by hanging, sixteen life imprisonments, and two fixed-term imprisonments.
After Japan regained its independence, forces insisting that Japan was an aggressor nation actively propagated the slogan “Japan is evil.”
Their characteristic trait is to conveniently omit points that would undermine their own arguments.
As I wrote in the August 2005 issue, for example, in recent debates over Yasukuni Shrine, Asahi Shimbun and House of Representatives member Koichi Kato claimed that “Japan accepted the Tokyo Trial in the San Francisco Peace Treaty,” when in fact Japan merely accepted the “judgments” of the Tokyo Trial.
They go on to assert that Japan “accepted the Tokyo Trial itself.”
This displays a level of ignorance as if they had never read the latter half of Article 11 of the treaty.
The latter half of Article 11 contains conditions for suspending—namely abolishing—the judgments.
Japan abolished the judgments on that basis.
No country raised any objection.
Asahi Shimbun and others may be deliberately neglecting this fact.
Similarly uninformed prime ministers and chief cabinet secretaries then casually declare that “we accepted the trial.”
After the peace treaty came into force, the revised Bereaved Families Relief Law was enacted unanimously at the 16th Special Session of the Diet in 1953.
It was unanimously decided, including by the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, that those designated as war criminals at the Tokyo Trial would be treated in the same manner as ordinary war dead.
Those who were most pleased by Japan being labeled an aggressor nation were leftists, including the Communist Party.
Because they had been suppressed before the war, they regarded prewar Japan as an evil country.
But what, in fact, was the prewar Communist Party?
It was the Japanese branch of the Comintern, receiving funds and directives from it and plotting the overthrow of the Japanese state.
Its remnants filled the vacancies created by the purge directives and then infiltrated postwar academia and journalism.
They also entered the educational world in the form of the teachers’ union.
These people continue to harbor the “syphilis bacillus” of the Tokyo Trial historical narrative.
The time has come for us to eradicate this disease once and for all.