Russia’s Ukraine invasion forces Japan to confront its nuclear taboo – but while Abe’s keen on a US umbrella, Japanese public is ‘simply not ready’

The former prime minister wants Tokyo to talk to the US about a nuclear-sharing agreement, though polls suggest most Japanese are opposed to the idea
Moscow’s actions are prompting a re-evaluation in a nation increasingly conscious about the nuclear leaps being made by its neighbours China and North Korea

Ukraine

Julian Ryall

Published: 4:00pm, 2 Mar 2022

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The spectre of nuclear weapons being deployed in Ukraine, combined with the leaps that both China and North Korea have made in recent years in atomic weaponry, has emboldened some on the right in Japan to call for the nation’s non-nuclear principles to be reconsidered.

And while the possibility of a conventional conflict devolving into an exchange of nuclear warheads has risen, analysts say the people of Japan – the only nation to have been the target of atomic attacks – are not yet ready to embrace their own nuclear deterrent.

The question of Japan developing and deploying its own nuclear weapons has long been an undercurrent in the nation’s security discussions, but came to the fore this week when former prime minister Shinzo Abe proposed that Tokyo open discussions with the United States on a nuclear-sharing agreement, similar to the way in which non-nuclear members of Nato are able to rely on the organisation’s nuclear-capable states.

Speaking on television on Sunday, Abe said, “It is necessary to understand how the world’s security is maintained. We should not put a taboo on discussions about the reality that we face.”

Those hawkish views were met with immediate resistance from the present prime minister, with Fumio Kishida telling a session of the Japanese parliament, the Diet, the very next day that it would be “unacceptable” for Japan to pursue an arrangement to share nuclear weapons.

Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe has proposed that Tokyo open discussions with the United States on a nuclear-sharing agreement. Photo: DPA

Kishida represents a constituency in Hiroshima, where survivors of the first nuclear attack in history have condemned Abe’s comments.

“His comment flies in the face of Japan’s course to move toward the abolition of nuclear weapons,” said Koichi Kawano, chairman of the Liaison Council of Hibakusha, Nagasaki Peace Movement Centre. Even discussing the issue should be “out of the question,” he told the Asahi newspaper.

Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi followed that up by similarly discussing the comments by Abe – his older brother – saying the suggestion that US nuclear weapons would be deployed during peacetime on Japanese territory in readiness to be launched by Japanese aircraft in the event of a crisis “would never be allowed”.

Out of the question

Koichi Kawano on the idea of Japan pursuing an arrangement to share nuclear weapons

“There are no changes to our adherence to the three non-nuclear principles,” he said, referring to the commitment of every government since Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945 to not develop, possess or permit the deployment on Japanese soil of nuclear weapons.

This policy does, however, have loopholes as it has been widely reported that US forces have had nuclear weapons aboard warships docked in Japanese ports and stored on bases in Okinawa prefecture in the past. Successive governments in Tokyo and Washington were able to get around this inconvenient situation through a policy of Japan simply not asking the US whether it had any atomic weapons on Japanese territory.

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Opinion polls have consistently indicated that most Japanese are opposed to the nation having a nuclear capability, with a study in 2019 finding that 75 per cent of Japanese supported a comprehensive ban on all nuclear weapons. Other polls suggest that between 80 per cent and 90 per cent are opposed to Japan deploying atomic weapons.

The debate had already started, however, with the conservative Sankei newspaper publishing an opinion column on Monday by Ryozo Kato, the former Japanese ambassador to the US, under the headline, “A call for serious and intelligent debate on nuclear deterrence”.

The column insisted that Japan had been faithful to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but that the treaty’s credibility had been weakened by other signatory nations ignoring their commitments to the agreement. The article claimed China’s nuclear development was a violation of Article 6 of the treaty, and said it had also failed to stop India, Pakistan and North Korea developing weapons.

Japan should have a deterrent similar to that of the UK

Yoichi Shimada

“What Japan needs is the assembly of its own deterrent power and the deterrence provided by the United States under the Japan-US alliance,” Kato wrote. “In this context, the reality is unchanged: nuclear deterrence is the last resort.”

The former ambassador suggested “there is no reason to conclude that Japan should immediately … arm itself with nuclear weapons”, as modifying the three non-nuclear principles would be a positive step. His suggestion was to cut those three principles to just two, permitting the deployment of other nations’ weapons on Japanese territory.

Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University, said it was “important” for the debate to start on Japan having a nuclear deterrent.

“I personally feel Japan should have a deterrent similar to that of the UK, which has a fleet of nuclear submarines of which one is constantly [on patrol] and providing protection,” he said.

Vanguard-class submarine HMS Vigilant, one of the UK’s four nuclear warhead-carrying submarines at HM Naval Base Clyde, Faslane, Scotland. Photo: AFP

“The current debate has been triggered by the Ukraine situation, of course, but the reality is that Japan has nuclear-armed China, North Korea and Russia as immediate neighbours and we presently depend on the US for our national defence,” he said.

“As those countries improve their nuclear capabilities, the US is becoming an increasingly unreliable provider of support to Japan, meaning that we must have our own, independent deterrent.”

Shimada claimed that “many” Japanese people held similar opinions but were reluctant to speak their minds due to the self-image of the nation as the victim of nuclear weapons. And he said the technology required for Japanese scientists to build a nuclear warhead was well within their capabilities and could be completed “very quickly”.

Hiromi Murakami, a professor of political science at the Tokyo campus of Temple University, admitted that nuclear weapons were now tacitly being discussed in Japan – but thought the Japanese public would continue to oppose a home-grown nuclear deterrent.

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“If Russia had not invaded Ukraine, this issue would not even be under discussion,” she said. “Around the world, governments are having to reconsider their own security needs and how those have been altered by what is happening in Europe now.

“The obvious concern has to be that this could trigger a new arms race and, in Japan, I sense that the discussion has changed so that nuclear weapons are not now completely off the table for policymakers,” she said. “And that is a significant change.

“But the Japanese public is simply not ready for that step, or to even discuss it,” Murakami added. “The Sankei may have run a column and Abe may have said something on television, but I do not see that debate starting in the mainstream media or society.”

Speaking at an online event on Monday considering the situation in Ukraine, chairman of the Middle East Institute MUS Bilahari Kausikan said Abe’s comments demonstrated “the catalysing of a new attitude towards security around the world”.

Underlining that point, Ahn Cheol-soo, the candidate of the centrist People’s Party in the upcoming South Korean presidential election, said last week that his nation needed a nuclear-sharing agreement with the US to guarantee its security, including access to nuclear weapons presently stored on US bases in Guam and Okinawa in the event of a military crisis breaking out on the peninsula.