The positive and negative significance of the Tokyo Trial has been passionately debated among Japanese historians and intellectuals. However, the attitudes of the Japanese people in general towards the Trial have been rather apathetic. The Trial was almost absent in Japanese public discourse from the conclusion of the Trial until the 1980s, and according to opinion polls conducted recently, 60 per cent or even 70 per cent of Japanese people are unfamiliar with the specifics of the Trial. Some historians and intellectuals argue that the Tokyo Trial, unlike the Nuremberg Trial, had no direct impact on post-war Japanese society. Nonetheless, a close look at Japanese attitudes shows that the Tokyo Trial has had a subtle but substantial impact on the Japanese sense of history, war responsibility and war guilt, all of which are highly contemporary issues. This long-term societal impact of the Tokyo Trial became clearer in the 1990s and started to be recognised and pointed out publicly from 2005 onwards.

It is a popular view that international war crimes tribunals are a tool for social transformation and reconciliation after conflicts. According to advocates, one of their strengths in this regard is the individual punishment of criminals, which is said to achieve justice for victims while avoiding the collectivization of guilt. This is also said to have the effect of endorsing the transformation of the nation by freeing it from the burden of collective guilt while detaching those responsible for war crimes from the society concerned and eliminating their political influence. Does individual criminal punishment achieve these? And is the de-collectivization of guilt through international trials desirable for post-conflict social transformation and reconciliation? This article addresses these questions by focusing on the impact of the Tokyo International Military Tribunal, which is analyzed through the ways in which it has been perceived in post-war Japan. It argues that the Tribunal's punishment of wartime leaders produced an ambiguous effect on the Japanese people's sense of war guilt and responsibility, which in turn became an obstacle for the nation to achieve reconciliation not only with its former victims but also with its own past. The article questions the assumption that international criminal justice can promote social transformation and reconciliation.