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Reopening the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, Fifty-Four Years Later: As Recorded in the Documentary Video, Breaking the History of Silence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Mina Watanabe  and
Norma Field
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Abstract

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Twenty years ago, in December 2000, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the IMTFE, also known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal or the Tokyo Trial), was “reopened” in Tokyo to address unfinished business: the crime of holding women as sex slaves for the Japanese imperial army. The women's tribunal was at once the culmination and launch of a renewed effort by international civil society to address war crimes that fester to this day. Norma Field and Watanabe Mina reflect on that occasion and urge readers to view the documentary record of that historic event, Breaking the History of Silence, easily accessed online until December 2021.

Keywords

Women's International War Crimes Tribunalcomfort womenWomen's Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM)Video JukuKang Duk-kyung
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , February 2021 , e1
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2021

References

Notes

1 Adapted by Watanabe Mina from her opening essay to the wam newsletter [wam だより] no. 46 (November 2020) and translated by Norma Field. Please see here for the extensive range of articles pertaining to the “comfort women” published at The Asia-Pacific Journal.

2 WAM, as a museum in keeping with the spirit of the “Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery,” has decided to stay open on four specific public holidays. The majority of public holidays in Japan are closely linked to the Emperor system, and during the Asia-Pacific War, these holidays were deployed as occasions for deifying the Emperor. We open our doors on the Emperor's birthday and comparable occasions as a refusal to participate in such celebration. We hold seminars to discuss the Emperor system and the kinds of discrimination rooted in it, such as patriarchy, colonialism and racism, which still prevail in Japanaese society.