Publications

It is an item of faith for many Japanese – and many Japan watchers – that their country will never build or acquire nuclear weapons. Japan’s nonnuclear status, a product of both the searing experience of August 1945 and a calculation of the strategic value of nuclear weapons, has been a pillar of the nation’s postwar political identity. Recent developments could force Japan to reconsider the nuclear option, however. The U.S must step up, engage Japanese decision-makers in a serious discussion of their security concerns and work to allay them. Failure to do so could push Tokyo over the nuclear brink.

Japan’s status as the only atom-bombed nation made highly charged any discussion of nuclear weapons. An education system dominated by the left used the nation’s history to reinforce pacifism and to subtly critique a conservative foreign policy that relied on the U.S. for national security. The result was a virtual "taboo" that headed off any discussion of nuclear weapons and the creation of a third rail of national politics: Japanese politicians who even suggested that it might make sense for Japan to have a nuclear weapons capability were immediately ostracized or punished.