TOKYO: Japan’s Constitution binds it to peace, but the discomfort level of activists and neighbouring countries is rising amid recent remarks by top politicians that indicate the nation should have the right to possess nuclear weapons.
These concerns are focused on the country’s large stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium, a product of its nuclear energy programme, but which makes Japan capable of building thousands of nuclear weapons in the future.
Activist groups like Greenpeace have zeroed in on the possibility — which local analysts say remain far off — that Japan could one day use this plutonium to build nuclear weapons capability.
“Japan is a latent nuclear weapons country,” Shaun Burnie, Greenpeace campaigner and veteran researcher on Japan’s nuclear energy programme, said on Tuesday.
The current attention on Japan’s views on going nuclear stems from statements by politicians like Ichiro Ozawa, who in April said, “If Japan wishes, it can produce thousands of nuclear warheads overnight to curb China. We will never be beaten in terms of military strength.”
Early this month, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said that with changes in the future political situation, Japan could choose to have nuclear weapons — although he said he was misquoted.
An aide, Shinzo Abe, was later quoted as saying it might be acceptable for Japan to have nuclear weapons “as long as they are small.”
The comments have been monitored elsewhere in Asia, a region that experienced Japan’s wartime aggression more than a half a century ago. China is keeping particularly close watch on comments from officials in Japan, its historical rival still sensitive to wounds of Japanese aggression.
But apart from being about nuclear weapons, the remarks by Japanese officials underscore Japan’s security concerns in Asia’s changing environment — rivalry with China, calls at home to amend Japan’s Peace Constitution seeking a larger international role for the country, and the possibility of a scaling down of the US security presence.
“That fear is heightened now as Japan loses its international clout, the end of the Cold War and the rising rivalry for status with China,” Umebayashi added.
Naoki Usui, a defence analyst, says comments like Ozawa’s reflect an increasingly jittery Japan, especially after the end of the Cold War, which has shaken the American nuclear umbrella that made Japan’s security a vital US interest.
“There is some frustration among top political and bureaucratic circles over the situation. There is definitely a growing push to boost Japan’s military status to expand its growing international clout,” he said.
Tang Zhongnan of China’s Institute of Japan Studies says assertions by Japanese politicians on the country’s possible nuclear capability is “not an isolated incident” and goes back to the early nineties along with calls for militarization, according to the Singapore-based Straits Times.
But activists say Japanese pacifist attitudes remain deeply rooted after having been the target of a US nuclear attack in World War II. Keiko Hashimoto of the non-government group Peace Boat says that it is this sentiment of the public — fed up with Tokyo’s wartime aggression and keeping Hiroshima in mind — that keeps conservative politicians in check.
Experts like Umebayashi say that while Japan has the technology and the plutonium, a product of reprocessing spent fuel, to produce weapons, they do not think it is a real possibility now. “The hanging question is whether Japan will be able to change its Peace Constitution towards this purpose,” he added.
Japan’s Constitution says: “The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.” To achieve this aim, “Land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”
But Greenpeace says Japan’s stockpile of high-quality plutonium and its sophisticated skills must be monitored, because it has the option to produce nuclear weapons in a period of a few months.
But public opposition is growing. While health and environmental risks are of grave concern, protests also centre on the issue of Japan’s right to possess and stockpile weapons-grade plutonium against a ban in the Constitution on possessing, producing, or allowing nuclear weapons into the country. —Dawn/The InterPress News Services.