SHANGHAI -- A Chinese university has announced an ambitious plan to build the largest database in Asia on the Japanese war criminal trials that followed World War II.

Shanghai Jiaotong University, together with the National Library of China and The Second Historical Archives of China, will collect dossiers on Japanese war criminals excluding the 28 Class A criminals such as the former prime minister and army generals, according to the university on Thursday.

Criminals with less serious crimes were tried in dozens of war criminal courts set up after the war in Asia-Pacific countries, including China, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand.

The project is challenging as research on trials has been fragmented and documents are scattered among different archives, universities and libraries across the region, said Cheng Zhaoqi, head of the Center for Tokyo Trial Studies at the university.

The database will be compiled in the Chinese, English and Japanese languages and will be open for international research, said Cheng.