Episode 484 – Passion and Prejudice, Part 2

This week: the Pal dissent becomes the Pal myth. How did an obscure document from the Tokyo Trials end up front and center in nationalist discourse in Japan today?

Sources

Nakazato, Nariaki. Neonationalist Mythology in Postwar Japan: Pal’s Dissenting Judgment at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. 

Nandy, Ashis. “The Other Within: The Strange Case of Radhabinod Pal’s Judgment on Culpability.” New Literary History 23, No 1 (Winter, 1992).

Ushimura, Kei. “Pal’s ‘Dissenting Judgment’ Reconsidered: Some notes on Postwar Japan’s Responses to the Opinion.” Japan Review 19 (2007).

Images

Pal and Shimonaka together during his 1952 trip to Japan.
The Pal monument at Yasukuni.
Kobayashi Yoshinori is apparently still making right-wing revisionist stuff. This book is called “Pal’s Truthful Account” (my rough translation) and the subtitle is all about how Pal vindicated Japan after World War II.

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