Judgment At Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
2023
by Gary J. Bass
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A landmark, magisterial history of the trial of Japan’s leaders as war criminals—the largely overlooked Asian counterpart to Nuremberg.
In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, and their fellow victors, the questions of justice seemed clear: Japan’s leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against citizens in China, the Philippines, Korea, and elsewhere; rampant abuses of POWs. For the Allied Forces, the trial was an opportunity to achieve justice against the defendants, but also to create a legal framework for the prosecution of war crimes and to prohibit the use of aggressive war, and to create the kind of liberal international order that would prevail in Europe. For the Japanese leaders facing trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism.
For more than two years, lawyers for both sides presented their cases before a panel of judges from China, India, the Philippines, and Australia, as well as the US and Europe. The testimony ran from horrific accounts of brutality and the secret plans to attack Pearl Harbor to the Japanese military’s threats to destabilize the government if it sued for peace. Yet rather than clarity and unanimity, the trial brought division and complexity; these tensions and contradictions could also be seen playing out across Asia as the trial unfolded, from China’s descent into civil war to India’s independence and partition to Japan’s first successful democratic elections and the rewriting of a new, liberal constitution.
Judgment at Tokyo is a riveting story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the Asian postwar era.
In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, and their fellow victors, the questions of justice seemed clear: Japan’s leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against citizens in China, the Philippines, Korea, and elsewhere; rampant abuses of POWs. For the Allied Forces, the trial was an opportunity to achieve justice against the defendants, but also to create a legal framework for the prosecution of war crimes and to prohibit the use of aggressive war, and to create the kind of liberal international order that would prevail in Europe. For the Japanese leaders facing trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism.
For more than two years, lawyers for both sides presented their cases before a panel of judges from China, India, the Philippines, and Australia, as well as the US and Europe. The testimony ran from horrific accounts of brutality and the secret plans to attack Pearl Harbor to the Japanese military’s threats to destabilize the government if it sued for peace. Yet rather than clarity and unanimity, the trial brought division and complexity; these tensions and contradictions could also be seen playing out across Asia as the trial unfolded, from China’s descent into civil war to India’s independence and partition to Japan’s first successful democratic elections and the rewriting of a new, liberal constitution.
Judgment at Tokyo is a riveting story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the Asian postwar era.
The Battle for Your Brain
2023
by Nita A. Farahany
Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, thought crimes are punishable by law, and your own feelings can be used against you. Where perfumers create customized fragrances to perfectly suit your emotions, and social media titans bypass your conscious mind to hook you to their products. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.
Neuroscience has already made all of the above possible today, and neurotechnology will soon become the universal controller for all of our interactions with technology. This can benefit humanity immensely, but without safeguards, it can severely threaten our fundamental human rights to privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination. Companies, governments, and militaries are all in: from contemplative neuroscience to consumer-based EEG technology, there have never been more ways to hack and track our brains.
The Battle for Your Brain by Nita A. Farahany dives deeply into the promises and perils of the coming dawn of brain access and alteration. Written by one of the world's foremost experts on neuroscience as it intersects with law and ethics, this highly original book offers a pathway forward to navigate the complex ethical dilemmas that neurotechnology presents, which will fundamentally impact our freedom to understand, shape, and define ourselves.