A Perspective from Japan

Japan's Contradictory Nuclear Policies

 

Cultural News, August 2007

 

 

By Motoaki Kamiura, Military Analyst

Translated by Alan Gleason

 

    Japan simultaneously embraces two mutually contradictory policies regarding nuclear weapons. As the only nation to experience a nuclear attack, it has presented a proposal for the abolition of nuclear arms to the United Nations General Assembly every year since 1994. At the same time, Japan assumes that if it ever comes under nuclear attack again, the United States will respond by attacking the attacker with nuclear weapons.

 

    When Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, in an address at Reitaku University in Chiba Prefecture on June 30, stated that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "couldn't be helped" (to use the most common English translation for shikataganai), he triggered intense public outrage and was forced to resign his post on July 3.

 

    Kyuma began his political career as a parliamentary representative from Nagasaki, so part of the outcry was over his perceived insensitivity to the many atomic bomb victims in his own district. But more significant, in the view of many, was that by appearing to sanction the use of nuclear weapons, the defense minister was undermining Japan's anti-nuclear efforts at the U.N.

 

    The deluge of criticism directed at Kyuma does not, however, mean that advocates of nuclear abolition have suddenly proliferated in Japan. Quite the contrary, voices calling for acquisition by Japan of its own nuclear arsenal, so as to free itself from dependence on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, are on the rise.

 

    Professor Kiichi Fujiwara of Tokyo University, whose field is international history, wrote in the July 5 edition of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that instead of making idealistic declarations about global nuclear disarmament, Japan should focus on devising a pragmatic policy for de-nuclearizing East Asia.

 

  But Professor Fujiwara's statement implies that Japan should reject America's nuclear umbrella, and this stance is by no means supported by all Japanese citizens. Most Japanese, in fact, believe that their country needs the protection afforded by American nukes.

 

   Unless it resolves the inherent contradiction between its non-nuclear proposals and its dependence on a nuclear umbrella, Japan will lose whatever trust it has built up among the family of nations.

 

Motoaki Kamiura is a Tokyo-based military analyst. When the world is in crisis, he appears frequently on national television programs.

 

    Alan Gleason is an editor, writer, and Japanese-English translator. He lives in Tokyo.