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Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Aso has renewed his call for a discussion about whether the pacifist nation should acquire nuclear weapons after North Korea's first atom bomb test.
“We need to discuss once again why Japan came to decide not to possess nuclear arms,” Aso told a parliamentary foreign affairs committee Wednesday.
“On the assumption that North Korea really owns nuclear arms now, the situation of the Far East has changed drastically,” said Aso. “We should discuss if Japan can stay as it is.”
Aso last week alarmed neighbouring countries that suffered under Japan's brutal militaristic past when he said it was important to debate whether to possess atomic weapons.
Shoichi Nakagawa, the policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), who is also a close ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has also called for frank discussions on the topic.
But Abe has repeatedly rejected the idea of developing nuclear weapons despite his strong support for a more active military role for Japan, which has been officially pacifist since its World War II defeat.
He reiterated again Wednesday that Japan would uphold its three-point non-nuclear principle against the “possession, production and presence” of nuclear arms on its territory and said the country would not discuss going nuclear.
Defense Agency Director General Fumio Kyuma also rejected the idea.
“If Japan develops nuclear weapons, that would lead to a nuclear arms race in the region,” he told journalists.
The South Korean independent Hankyoreh daily has reported that Seoul was already assessing its options in case Japan decides to develop nuclear weapons.
Aso, however, has also maintained that Japan will uphold its self-imposed three-point non-nuclear principle.
Motofumi Asai, a former diplomat and international relations professor, said there were now differing views within the LDP on relations with the United States and Japanese foreign and security policy.
“Apparently Prime Minister Abe and Foreign Minister Aso belong to the faction which does not accept the post-war system as it is,” said Asai, who is now director of the Hiroshima Peace Institute.
“Kyuma, despite being director general of the Defence Agency, knows that discussing the matter itself can shake Japan-US relations.”
Asai said he did not think the United States, which Japan relies on for its security, would condone any move to acquire nuclear weapons.
“If it allows Japan to do so, it may open up Pandora's Box. I think the United States wants to stop such a thing,” he said.
Japan and the United States are stepping up their military alliance, including a missile defense system.
More than any other country, Japan feels a direct threat from the North Korea, which fired a missile over its main island in 1998 and test-fired seven more rockets in July of this year.
Japan adopted its non-nuclear approach under former prime minister Eisaku Sato, who was in office from 1964 to 1972 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.
The country has long campaigned against nuclear weapons. The United States in 1945 destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atom bombs, killing more than 210,000 people instantly or from horrific burns.
