The Bengali judge Japan never forgot, and Bangladesh never claimed

As Prime Minister Tarique Rahman visits Tokyo from 26 to 29 October, it is time to reclaim Radhabinod Pal, born in Kushtia, who stood alone for justice in 1948.

When the prime minister lands in Tokyo on 26 October, he will be received with the usual honours accorded to the leader of a country that counts Japan as its largest development partner, the country behind Matarbari, Metro Rail and Terminal 3. But there is another, deeper welcome waiting to be unlocked in Tokyo, one that has been waiting for 78 years at a quiet shrine in the heart of the city. At Yasukuni Shrine, surrounded by memorials to Japan's war dead, stands a monument to a Bengali. Not a general. Not a diplomat. A judge. Its inscription reads: "Justice Radhabinod Pal."

Most Bangladeshis have never heard of him. In Japan, however, his name is widely remembered.

Radhabinod Pal was born on 27 January 1886 in Salimpur village, Kumarkhali, Kushtia, then part of the Nadia district of the Bengal Presidency and now within Bangladesh. His story is now legendary in Japan but largely forgotten in the land of his birth: a barefoot cowherd boy who sat outside his village primary school, listening to lessons, until a visiting inspector asked a question that no student inside could answer. A voice came from outside the window: "I know." That boy was awarded a stipend, went to Calcutta, studied mathematics at Presidency College and law at Calcutta University, helped shape the Indian Income Tax Act of 1922, became a judge of the Calcutta High Court in 1941 and Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University in 1944.
 

Radhabinod Pal (27 January 1886 – 10 January 1967)

In 1946, the British Government of India nominated him to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, commonly known as the Tokyo Trial.

Europe had Nuremberg. Asia had Tokyo. Twenty-eight Japanese leaders, including wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were tried as Class A war criminals. Eleven judges from eleven Allied countries sat in judgement. The trial lasted more than two years, involving 816 sessions, 419 witnesses and 48,412 pages of transcripts.

In November 1948, the majority of judges found the defendants guilty, with seven sentenced to death by hanging. But one judge dissented, arguing that all the defendants should be acquitted. That judge was Radhabinod Pal.

He did not argue that Japan had done no wrong. He argued that the trial itself was legally flawed. In a 1,235-page dissenting judgement, which he reportedly prepared largely on his own, Pal laid out three principles that remain relevant to debates about international law today.

First, ex post facto law is not legitimate law. Pal argued that the Allies had retrospectively applied the crime of "waging aggressive war" to punish the defeated. You cannot create a crime after the act has been committed and then prosecute someone for it.

Second, you cannot judge colonialism while being a colonial empire. Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States, all among the Allied powers, held vast colonies or overseas territories in 1948. How could they judge Japan's imperial ambitions without confronting their own?

Third, and most uncomfortably, victors' justice is not necessarily impartial justice. Pal questioned why the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed vast numbers of civilians, were not subjected to the same legal scrutiny. Had such acts been committed by the defeated, would they have been treated differently? Justice must be impartial, or it risks becoming an instrument of revenge.
 

The memorial to Justice Radhabinod Pal at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, Japan. Pal, who was born in present-day Kushtia, Bangladesh, became renowned for his dissenting judgement at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in 1948, challenging the legal foundations of the trial. His legacy remains widely recognised in Japan but has received comparatively little attention in Bangladesh.

He argued for the acquittal of all 28 defendants. Not because he loved militarism, but because he believed in the principles of law. For this, Japan never forgot him, even as its political circumstances changed.

When Japan was under American occupation and any defence of its wartime leaders was controversial, Pal's dissent remained significant. When Japan became an economic superpower in the 1960s and sought to move beyond the war, it continued to remember him. In 1966, the Japanese government awarded Pal the First Class of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, one of the country's highest honours, in recognition of his contribution.

Today, there is a monument to him at Yasukuni. There is another at Ryozen Kannon Temple in Kyoto, where Japanese families commemorate the war dead. His name has been preserved through memorials, publications and public discussions of the Tokyo Trial. Japanese political leaders, including Shinzo Abe, have acknowledged his legacy during visits to India. In 2007, Abe mentioned Pal by name in his address to the Indian Parliament.

India, meanwhile, awarded him the Padma Vibhushan in 1959, but his legacy has received relatively limited public attention. And Bangladesh, the country that now encompasses his birthplace, has done remarkably little to honour him. This is not just historical oversight. It is strategic folly.

Japan is today one of Bangladesh's largest bilateral development partners, with billions of dollars committed to ongoing JICA projects. But Japan's relationship with Bangladesh is still largely transactional: ports, bridges and power plants. It lacks a strong emotional and civilisational anchor. Vietnam has cultivated such connections with Japan through shared Buddhist traditions and historical experiences. India has Pal. We have the birthplace, but we have left that connection largely unexplored.

Imagine if, during this visit, our prime minister could say in Tokyo: "We have come to thank you for honouring our son. We have decided to honour him at home."
 

Justice Radhabinod Pal (standing in the back row, far left) with fellow judges of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, commonly known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. In his landmark dissenting judgement in 1948, Pal challenged the legal foundations of the trial and argued for the acquittal of all defendants.

What would it take? Not much. A posthumous Swadhinata Puraskar for Justice Pal as a son of the soil. A small memorial complex in Salimpur, Kumarkhali, restoring his ancestral homestead and establishing a library housing his 1,235-page dissent, translated into Bangla for the first time. A bronze replica of the Tokyo monument at the Faculty of Law, University of Dhaka. A Justice R B Pal Chair in International Law at the university, funded jointly through cooperation with JICA. And five annual Pal Fellowships, enabling Bangladeshi law students to study international law in Japan through the MEXT scholarship programme.

The cost would be modest compared with that of a major JICA project. The return could be substantial: extensive coverage in Japanese newspapers and a message that Bangladesh is not merely a recipient of aid, but also a contributor to debates about global justice.

There is a more urgent reason. Pal's principle that international law cannot be applied selectively is precisely what resonates with Bangladesh's position on accountability for the Rohingya. The case before the International Court of Justice, brought by The Gambia against Myanmar, concerns questions of international responsibility that matter deeply to Bangladesh. When we argue that major powers cannot have one law for the weak and another for themselves, we echo the concerns Pal raised in Tokyo in 1948.

Japan continued honouring him even when his dissent remained controversial and his interpretation of the war attracted criticism. For many Japanese, he represented something rarer than material assistance: a sense of dignity rooted in the defence of legal principle.

It is time we honoured him because he gave us something equally valuable: an example of how a boy from a modest village in Kushtia could grow up to challenge the legal reasoning of an international tribunal established by the victorious powers of the Second World War, and have the courage to stand by his convictions.

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M Sabbir Hussain is an engineer and development economist.

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