PRESS RELEASE

8 October 1998

Japan 'Coy About Its Nuclear Future'

Japan is a nuclear fence-sitter. Despite assertions by the Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary that Japan is "perhaps the only nation that can openly promote [nuclear] disarmament," nuclear weapons capability remains an option for its security.

Japanese public opinion runs strongly against the idea of nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, while the government regularly condemns nuclear tests, calls for further disarmament through ratification of START II and progress toward START III, and pledges to "take the initiative" on nuclear non-proliferation, in real terms the passiveness of Japan’s nuclear approach speaks volumes. In addition to regular voting abstentions on UN nuclear disarmament resolutions, recent intransigence is the Japanese government’s refusal to endorse the declaration of the New Agenda Coalition.

The coalition is a group of 8 countries (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia, South Africa and Sweden) that recently called for the rapid achievement of a nuclear weapon-free world. In its 9 June declaration, the New Agenda Coalition not only calls on the nuclear capable states to renounce nuclear weapons, but, significantly, it urges the signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to take consequential steps to fulfill their Treaty obligations.

In effect, Japan possesses its own latent nuclear umbrella. Japan continues to accumulate large stocks of plutonium, which outweigh its capacity to use as reactor fuel. Revealed in a 1994 Greenpeace report, the US Department of Energy had been covertly supplying Japan with technical know-how on producing weapons grade plutonium. Japan has both the nuclear capability and established technical ability to launch accurate and long-range space missiles. Aided by the absence of a Freedom of Information Act, the Japanese government has refused to make public its record on nuclear reliance.

Japan cannot actively keep a nuclear weapons policy option, as doing so would violate the NPT in the same way that the nuclear weapons states have been called into account by the New Agenda Coalition for their failure to uphold Treaty obligations. However, the Japanese government has also not disavowed a 1960s document that the country "should keep the economic and technical potential for the production of nuclear weapons, while seeing to it that Japan will not be interfered with in this regard."

"The Japanese government is publicly seeking the moral high ground in condemning India and Pakistan for their recent nuclear testing, while privately remaining coy about its own nuclear future," said Tanya Padberg, a research fellow at BASIC.

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