In 1946–1948, he served as a defense counsel at the
Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, and defended
Shigenori Tōgō. Tōgō's role at the trial was a significant one, since he was a member of the civilian government, not a military official. Tōgō was ultimately depicted as a reluctant participant in Hideki Tojo's war cabinet and in Japanese empire-building more generally, in spite of his having led the Greater East Asia Ministry after 1943. Tōgō was spared the death penalty and instead declared guilty of five of the nine counts against him and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Blakeney concurrently served as defense counsel for General
Yoshijirō Umezu, who was sentenced to life imprisonment. Blakeney's arguments at the Tokyo Trials in May 1946 have attracted attention from some Japanese audiences. Some of his statements have been interpreted as critical of the trial's overall hypocrisy, particularly one statement which criticized censorship of discussion of the atomic bombings of Japan. Right-wing artist Kobayashi Yoshinori's 2006 manga "Class-A War Criminals" brought this speech into further notoriety. In the most heavily quoted excerpt from his remarks, Blakeney noted that killing by a nation,
wartime or
peacetime, and even waging a
war of aggression, could not be considered
crime under
international law. The defense counsel for Togo briefly juxtaposed the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima in relation to the
attack on Pearl Harbor, saying: (As soon as the following remarks began, the simultaneous interpretation, which was supposed to be provided by the charter, stopped, and the Japanese transcript only stated "No interpretation from here on.") Blakeney's speech was covered in the
New York Times, but was overshadowed the same day in the courtroom by an incident where
Shūmei Ōkawa slapped Tojo Hideki and made a scene later by crying and praying. In the months following, a number of defense counsel resigned, but Blakeney continued his work for the defense team, arguing that the court should not create a double standard where the Japanese were punished but others were allowed to go free for committing acts of war. On November 19, 1948, one week after the sentences had been handed down, Blakeney produced a review of his defendant's case for General Douglas MacArthur. Blakeney, together with defense attorney George Furness, filed an appeal with the
Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of the convicted Japanese officials, arguing that the ruling could not be upheld because
General Douglas MacArthur had acted unconstitutionally in constituting the tribunal. The appeal was denied. After the International Military Tribunal for the Far East concluded, Blakeney defended Admiral
Soemu Toyoda in one of the more significant postwar cases regarding the doctrine of command responsibility. ==Later life==