Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; December 15, 2016)

Following in the footsteps of actors including Richa Chadha, Ali Fazal and Swara Bhaskar, Irrfan Khan will be the newest B-Townie to take the online route.

Tokyo Trial, a historic drama set in post World War II Japan, sees the actor in the role of a Calcutta judge, who is summoned to Tokyo after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings to execute a trial. Irrfan shot for the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), FATT (Netherlands), and Don Carmody Television (DCTV, Canada) co-production, which has been picked up by Netflix, in Lithuania and Japan last year.

In a statement released this week, NHK announced that the four-part mini series forms a part of a first between NHK and Netflix. “The Tokyo Trial has been a milestone in world history and needed to be brought to a world-wide audience,” Hans De Weers, producer, FATT Productions said.

President of Netflix Japan, Greg Peters said, “Tokyo Trial is a powerful story of historical significance and now, through Netflix, it will reach 86 million members across 190 countries.”

The series is a recreation of the 1946 trial when 11 judges from across the world were summoned to engage in a trial that determined the outcome of over 28 Pacific war criminals. It stars Marcel Hensema, Jonathan Hyde, Paul Freeman, Stephen McHattie and Julian Wadham, with Michael Ironside as General, Douglas MacArthur.

Tokyo trials

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, better known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was set up on April 29, 1946, to try leaders of the Japanese Empire for three types of war crimes: Class A for those starting war, Class B for crimes against humanity and Class C for planning atrocious crimes.