The mini series is well made, all actors and scenes meticulously executed. But I could not stop thinking the show really minimized the reasons of why the trial was being held. Although the main focus of the show was around the trial itself, at the end of watching the series i was only left with the emphasized message of a potential "mistrial".
Scenes of justice Pal especially were depicted with intentional emphasis on "fairness", and scenes with other judges were curated to look more like they were scheming together. It was very clear that the scripts and scenes were structured with a bias.
Japanese war criminals convicted were the leaders of Japanese military forces that committed historically the worst examples of war crimes such as massacres, human experiments, cannibalism and more. These were the individuals who condoned such inhumane crimes and sometimes directly ordered them.
This part being left out completely aligns with Japanese nationalist government's viewpoint on the war and their continued efforts of packaging the history in their favor and denying their wrongdoings, in efforts of portraying Japan as the "victim" of the war, not the instigators. This behavior of Japan has been continuously criticized in comparison so Germany's behavior of acknowledging and addressing their wrongdoings in the WW II.
It is important for us the audience to gain a wholistic understanding of the war itself in order to see the plain truth of inhumane behaviors of Japan and Germany at the time, outside of the short and partially fictional scenes curated by the show.
Scenes of justice Pal especially were depicted with intentional emphasis on "fairness", and scenes with other judges were curated to look more like they were scheming together. It was very clear that the scripts and scenes were structured with a bias.
Japanese war criminals convicted were the leaders of Japanese military forces that committed historically the worst examples of war crimes such as massacres, human experiments, cannibalism and more. These were the individuals who condoned such inhumane crimes and sometimes directly ordered them.
This part being left out completely aligns with Japanese nationalist government's viewpoint on the war and their continued efforts of packaging the history in their favor and denying their wrongdoings, in efforts of portraying Japan as the "victim" of the war, not the instigators. This behavior of Japan has been continuously criticized in comparison so Germany's behavior of acknowledging and addressing their wrongdoings in the WW II.
It is important for us the audience to gain a wholistic understanding of the war itself in order to see the plain truth of inhumane behaviors of Japan and Germany at the time, outside of the short and partially fictional scenes curated by the show.