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Adelphi Series
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Japan
Mark Fitzpatrick
To cite this article: Mark Fitzpatrick (2015) Japan, Adelphi Series, 55:455, 65-126
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19445571.2015.1146022
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For much of the past half-century, Japan has been considered
to be a likely candidate for nuclear proliferation. It has both
the means and the motive to do so. The nation’s highly developed
industrial base features advanced nuclear technologies,
including those for both uranium enrichment and plutonium
reprocessing. It has had contentious relations with nucleararmed
neighbours, first the Soviet Union, then China and now
also North Korea. Yet for 50 years, constraints on nuclearisation
have outweighed the motivations. An aversion to nuclear
weapons in light of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains strong
among the citizenry and the scientific community, and this
is reinforced by law and practice. Going nuclear would have
prohibitively high opportunity costs in terms of commerce,
diplomacy and national security. Every government examination
of the nuclear question over the years has thus reached
the same conclusion: it is wiser for Japan to rely for its ultimate
security on the US alliance than to seek an indigenous
nuclear deterrent. Yet Japan has in the meantime employed a
quasi nuclear-hedging strategy that would enable a quick-start
nuclear-weapons programme, should circumstances dramati-
Japan
chapter two
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66 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
cally change for the worse. Ensuring that the country does not
develop nuclear arms therefore depends to a great extent on
the credibility of the US extended-deterrence commitment,
which shows no sign of ebbing.
History
During the Second World War, the Japanese imperial army
and navy pursued parallel nuclear-weapons programmes. The
army’s ‘Project Ni’ was based on the gas-diffusion method
of uranium enrichment; the navy’s ‘Project F’ focused on
gas-centrifuge-enrichment technology. Impeded by material
shortages and competing government priorities, neither project
progressed beyond the laboratory stage, although Japanese
scientists did learn how to trigger a fission reaction, and the
amount of uranium required for a bomb.1
Japanese interest in nuclear weapons reawakened a decade
later, encouraged by the US and France. The US Joint Chiefs of
Staff considered in the late 1950s transferring nuclear weapons
to the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF), under a scheme similar
to NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangements.2
Prime minister
Nobusuke Kishi, in office from 1957 to 1960, believed that Japan
needed to possess nuclear weapons if it was to have global
influence.3
In the early 1960s, his successor, Hayato Ikeda, also
expressed an interest in nuclear arms.
Nuclear weapons were introduced to US-occupied Okinawa
in December 1954, amid a US–China crisis over the Taiwan
Strait. By 1967 about 1,200 of the nuclear gravity bombs were
deployed at Kadena Air Base, though they had been removed
by the time that Okinawa reverted to Japanese control, in
May 1972. The Pentagon also transferred non-nuclear components
of such weapons to US bases in Japan itself, in the hope
that complete weapons eventually could be deployed there.4
Meanwhile, under a secret clause of the US–Japan Security
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Japan | 67
Treaty (see below), US bombers and warships transited Japan
while carrying nuclear weapons.
China’s nuclear test in October 1964 prompted prime
minister Eisaku Sato to tell US ambassador to Japan Edwin
Reischauer that Tokyo should have nuclear weapons too.5
Follow-on discussions with US president Lyndon Johnson
and the US secretary of defense Robert McNamara, suggest,
however, that Sato’s reference to nuclear weapons was a diplomatic
ploy designed to strengthen Washington’s deterrence
promise – and, indeed, the promise was strengthened.6
Nuclear studies
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, amid a public debate sparked
by China’s nuclearisation and international negotiation of the
1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), at least five different
government-related studies assessed the pros and cons of
developing nuclear weapons. They all concluded that the best
option was continued reliance on US nuclear deterrence. In
1967–68, a quasi-private study group called Anzen Hoshou
Chousa Kai (Research Commission on National Security)
concluded that a plutonium-based bomb would be easier
to produce than one using highly enriched uranium (HEU);
that the nation’s first nuclear-power reactor, at Tokai Village,
could be used to produce 20 bombs’ worth of weapons-grade
plutonium per year from indigenous natural uranium; and
that Japanese companies and research institutions possessed
the bomb-making technologies necessary to the effort. The
study argued against such a course due to the huge production
costs it would entail and the negative impact it would have on
Japan’s diplomatic relations.7
A second study – initiated by the Cabinet Research Office in
1967 and sometimes called the 1968/1970 report because it was
completed in two parts in those years – similarly concluded that
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68 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
nuclearisation was ‘possible and rather easy’, but not desirable.
Developing a nuclear deterrent would be enormously costly
and politically divisive. It would also spark regional suspicion
and result in diplomatic isolation. Other risks included
the geological dangers of conducting underground nuclearexplosion
tests on a seismically active archipelago. Given the
concentration of its population in a relatively small area, Japan
would remain vulnerable to a first strike from China even if it
acquired a small nuclear force. This was precisely the conclusion
that Sato’s government had hoped for from the study, as
it countered arguments from domestic pro-nuclear advocates
and helped allay foreign concerns that Japan might head down
the path to a nuclear weapon.8
A 1969 study by the National
Institute for Defense Studies, under the Japan Defense Agency
(JDA), reached similar conclusions.9
Complementing the main recommendation, the 1968/1970
report also advocated a nuclear-hedging strategy. It judged
it ‘vital’ that Japan achieve a sufficient degree of nuclear
independence, for both military and economic security. The
authors thus recommended that Japan build gaseous-diffusion
uranium-enrichment plants to reduce dependence on
US-origin uranium.10
A fourth study – this one produced by the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs’ Foreign Policy Planning Committee, and thus
more official than the others, but termed a ‘research paper’
rather than a statement of policy – similarly concluded in
1969 that Japan should maintain its non-nuclear stance for the
time being, while maintaining the latent economic and technical
ability to produce nuclear weapons if such action was
warranted by international developments. Given the overlap
between civilian and military uses of nuclear power, so the
argument went, signing the NPT would not prevent Japan
from having a nuclear option, which could be put into play
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Japan | 69
in ten years’ time. Summarising the study, one foreign-ministry
official wrote, ‘we will continue to use nuclear power for
peaceful purposes, on the one hand. On the other, we should
be in a position where we can continue to develop fast-breeder
reactors and other relevant installations so as to make nuclear
weapons instantly in case of need.’11
An official study commissioned in 1970 by director general
of the JDA Yasuhiro Nakasone, and produced in 1972 as a
White Paper, also concluded that nuclear-weapons development
would be ineffective because of the cost – consuming
40% of the defence budget for five years – and the absence
of a nuclear test site. Producing ‘defensive’ nuclear weapons
would invite an adverse foreign reaction and risk triggering
war, the White Paper concluded. Nakasone, who had earlier
been drawn to the idea of indigenous nuclear weapons, thus
developed second thoughts.12
Government-sponsored studies on the desirability of indigenous
nuclear weapons were again undertaken in the 1990s
when the end of the Cold War, North Korea’s nuclear quest
and China’s military modernisation changed Japan’s security
environment for the worse. The most widely discussed report
was commissioned by the JDA, apparently with the intention
of proving the negative consequences of a nuclear option.13
As
with previous government reports, it concluded in 1995 that
joining a nuclear arms race would be strategically unwise and
hugely expensive. The report foresaw no possibility of a conflict
with China that would involve nuclear weapons. Interestingly
– and wrongly, as it turned out – the report also judged that
it was unlikely the US would allow North Korea to become
nuclear-armed.14
The most recent government study that has come to light
about the feasibility of nuclearisation was written in 2006,
entitled ‘On Japan’s Capability for the Domestic Production
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70 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
of Nuclear Weapons’. Commissioned by a senior government
official, it concluded that Japan had the technical expertise
and facilities to develop a small nuclear warhead and that the
nation’s M-V and H2-A rockets had potential intercontinental
ballistic missile (ICBM) capabilities, but that developing a
prototype weapon would take at least three to five years, cost
¥200–300 billion (US$1.75–2.5bn) and require hundreds of
experts and engineers. The journalist who revealed the report
assumes it was produced without the knowledge of government
leaders by bureaucrats who wanted to be in a position
to offer analysis in the event that they were asked about the
nation’s latent nuclear capability.15
The key takeaway here is that every time the government
commissioned a study, the conclusions were the same: going
nuclear was neither desirable nor necessary as long as Japan
could rely on the US defence commitment. None of the internal
assessments were undertaken in order to justify nuclear
weapons or because government leaders doubted their nonproliferation
course. The purpose, rather, was to take stock at
times of a new security environment and, by quietly leaking
the assessments, to reassure concerned neighbours and friends
of Japan’s steadfast non-nuclear-armed posture while also
reminding them of Japan’s nuclear potential. This typically
served to encourage the US to reaffirm its extended-deterrence
commitment.Meanwhile,anuclear-hedgingstrategywasnever
questioned and was sometimes explicitly recommended.16
Policies
Japan has adopted various legal and political constraints on
not acquiring nuclear weapons. The ‘Basic Law on Atomic
Energy’, enacted in 1955, mandates that the research, development
and utilisation of atomic energy must be limited to
peaceful purposes. In June 2012, the national Diet (parliament)
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Japan | 71
added a supplementary provision to the Basic Law to insert the
words ‘national security’ as an aim of the safe use of nuclear
energy. Critics claimed that this change allowed for nuclear
technology to be used for military purposes.17
The government
and the lawmaker from the conservative Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP) who initiated the change, which was done without
any parliamentary debate, claimed the intention was to refer
to nuclear security, including anti-terrorism.18
If so, the wrong
phrase was used.
Contrary to common wisdom, the legal restrictions do
not include a constitutional prohibition of nuclear weapons.
Article 9 of Japan’s constitution renounces war as a ‘sovereign
right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of
settling international disputes’. After the Korean War, clause
2 of Article 9, which says ‘land, sea, and air forces, as well as
other war potential, will never be maintained’ was interpreted
to allow ‘military capability that does not exceed the minimum
necessary level for self-defence’. This enabled establishment
of the JSDF. In 1957, Kishi stated that nuclear weapons were
permissible under this interpretation, provided that they
stayed within the scope of the ‘minimum necessary level for
self-defence’. In 1965, the Cabinet Legislative Bureau (CLB), a
body in the executive branch that has de facto authority over
constitutional interpretation, confirmed this interpretation.
Five years later, the JDA formalised this in doctrine, saying that
a small-yield nuclear weapon would be within the minimum
force level required for self-defence. The interpretation was
repeated in the Diet in 1978 and 1982 by the CLB and in 2006
by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.19
Notwithstanding the constitutional allowance for nuclear
weapons, since 1971 successive Japanese prime ministers have
adhered to restrictive non-nuclear policies. The basis for the set
of policies is the ‘Three Non-Nuclear Principles’ introduced by
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72 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
Sato in December 1967, formalised by a Diet resolution in 1971,
and confirmed by successive cabinets. They prohibit Japan
from manufacturing, possessing or permitting the entry of
nuclear weapons into the country, or its airspace or territorial
waters. Although Diet resolutions are legally non-binding, the
Three Non-Nuclear Principles are regarded by many Japanese
as a morally binding norm.20
Soon after he introduced the Three Non-Nuclear Principles,
Sato became concerned that pacifists were using them to
weaken the US nuclear guarantee. He thus announced in the
Diet in March 1968 a new nuclear-policy formulation called
the ‘Four Pillars Nuclear Policy’ to: 1) limit the use of nuclear
energy to peaceful purposes as regulated by the 1955 Atomic
Energy Basic Law; 2) pursue global nuclear disarmament; 3)
rely on US extended deterrence for protection against nuclear
attack; and 4) support the Three Non-Nuclear Principles ‘under
the circumstances where Japan’s national security is guaranteed
by the other three policies’.
Sato’s four pillars for the first time explicitly stated Japan’s
dependence on US extended deterrence. They also introduced
a conditionality to the Three Non-Nuclear Principles, keeping
the nuclear option open in the event that Japan’s security was
not guaranteed by US extended deterrence.21
In actuality, the Three Non-Nuclear Principles are two and a
half in number. A secret agreement dating from the early 1960s,
which came to light four decades later, allowed US warships
carrying nuclear weapons to make calls in Japanese ports.22
Sato originally planned on only the first two principles; the
third principle, on the entry of nuclear weapons, was added
under pressure from other cabinet and party members.23
But
tacit permission was given to the US Navy over the years to
carry nuclear weapons while in port and in order to strengthen
the US extended deterrence. The foreign minister’s private
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Japan | 73
advisory board in 2003 thus recommended formally redefining
the policy as the ‘2 ½ non-nuclear principles’. No action
was taken on this recommendation.24
In March 2010, however,
when asked in Diet debate what Japan would do if threatened
with nuclear weapons, foreign minister Katsuya Okada from
the leftist Democratic Party of Japan said ‘if Japan’s security
cannot be protected without temporary calls by US vessels
carrying nuclear weapons, the government would have to
make a decision even if it has political consequences’. His
words were common sense and simply expressed what has
been de facto policy for many years. Nevertheless, it was interesting
that Okada, who as noted below has strong disarmament
inclinations, should have been the one to say it in the Diet, and
thereby codify the policy.
Treaties and other international obligations
Although Japan today is a leading champion of the NPT, this
was not always the case. It took Japan 18 months to sign the
treaty after it was opened for signature on 1 July 1968, and
another six years to ratify the NPT. The reasons for hesitation
were mixed. Many Japanese resented the treaty’s inequity
between nuclear ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ and feared the former
would never disarm. There was a concern that giving up a
nuclear option would forever assign Japan to a second-class
global status, while nuclear-armed states, particularly China,
maintained power to exert their will. For reasons of national
security, policymakers wanted to keep a nuclear-weapons
option for the future. Senior Foreign Ministry officials told
US counterparts that Japan might need to consider nuclear
weapons if India or other non-NPT signatories became nucleararmed
or if China’s nuclear threat were to increase.25
There was
also a strong commercial motivation not to be treated disadvantageously
vis-à-vis Europe’s nuclear industry in terms of
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74 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
international inspections and access to advanced nuclear tech-
nologies.
During negotiations on the treaty, the US assured both
Japan and West Germany that Article IV would not interfere
with dual-use civil nuclear programmes.26
Allowances for
reprocessing in particular were reaffirmed before Japan ratified
the treaty. Upon signing the NPT in February 1970, Japan
attached a statement reflecting its interpretation that the only
proscribed nuclear activities were acquisition or control over
nuclear weapons or explosive devices and that the pursuit
of peaceful nuclear activities by non-nuclear weapons states
could not be subject to discriminatory treatment, even if such
activities could have a dual use in weapons development.
The statement stipulated that the NPT should be the first step
toward complete nuclear disarmament. The statement also
reaffirmed Japan’s right to withdraw from the treaty under
Article X if the ‘supreme interests of the nation’ were endan-
gered.
Despite the reassurances Japan received in connection with
signing the NPT, it still took six years to develop a consensus
on ratification, which raised doubts internationally about
Japan’s intentions. Indeed, some conservative forces within
the governing LDP remained opposed because they wanted a
nuclear option, while some leftist forces opposed ratification
because the treaty allowed five states to remain nuclear-armed.
Equal treatment with the EuropeanAtomic Energy Community
(Euratom) was not assured until a safeguards agreement was
negotiated with the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) in 1975 and signed the next year. Lingering worries
about the credibility of the US alliance in the aftermath of
president Nixon’s 1972 visit to China and the suspension of
dollar–gold convertibility, neither with prior consultation, may
have contributed to the delay.27
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Japan | 75
When the NPT came up for indefinite extension in 1995,
there remained some hesitation in Japan on the grounds that
the US nuclear umbrella could not always be relied upon and
that an indigenous option therefore should not be given up
forever. Under pressure from the US and other states, Japan
supported indefinite extension, but referred publicly to the
NPT withdrawal clause, as noted below.
Over the following years, Japan adopted other international
instruments that strengthened its non-proliferation
commitments. In 1996, Japan was among the first to sign the
Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which it
ratified the next year. In 1999, Japan became the first country
with a fully developed nuclear fuel cycle to have in place the
Additional Protocol, the IAEA’s strengthened safeguards
system. Four and a half years later, the IAEA drew the ‘broader
conclusion’ under the Additional Protocol that all nuclear
material in the country remains in peaceful activities, a conclusion
that has been reached every year since.
The IAEA keeps an office in Japan exclusively for safeguards
in that country, which accounts for nearly 17% of the IAEA’s
safeguards budget – more than any other state. Further attesting
to Japan’s non-proliferation reputation, a Japanese citizen,
Yukiya Amano, has headed the IAEA since 2009. Earlier, Japan
was a founding member of the Zangger Committee (1971) and
of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (1974), both of which seek to
control the export of materials and equipment that could be
applicable to the development of nuclear weapons.
Over the past three decades, Japan’s international disarmament
activism has generally increased. Since 1983, the Foreign
Ministry has sponsored study visits to Hiroshima and Nagasaki
through the United Nations Programme of Fellowships on
Disarmament for diplomats from 150 countries. Annually since
1989, the ministry organises a UN Conference on Disarmament
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76 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
in a different Japanese city, with international experts. Japan
financed a large percentage of the cost of the negotiations that
led to the CTBT in 1998. It also funded negotiations for the
Central Asian Nuclear-Weapons Free Zone.
Among the latest of Japan’s disarmament initiatives was a
‘Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation Policy Speech’
by Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in January 2014 calling for
nuclear-weapons states to reduce the role of nuclear weapons
for consideration ‘only in extreme circumstances based on
the right of individual or collective self-defence’. Giving the
speech in his home town of Nagasaki, Kishida naturally played
up Japan’s experience of being the only country to suffer the
wartime use of nuclear weapons. Japan’s emphasis on keeping
alive the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki underscores its
disarmament inclinations and contributes to the international
disarmament movement.
At the same time that it promotes global nuclear disarmament,
Japan relies on the US nuclear deterrent. As political
scientist Nobumasa Akiyama puts it, the nation is ‘caught
between a moralistic view on nuclear weapons and the reality
of today’s security environment’.28
The dichotomy often comes
under the spotlight with regard to public statements. In 2009,
for example, foreign minister Okada, who, as noted above,
was the first to admit publicly that the Three Non-Nuclear
Principles were not absolute, advocated that the US adopt a
‘no first-use’ policy with regard to nuclear weapons. The stance
was opposed by bureaucrats who feared it would erode confidence
in the US security guarantee.29
It was not surprising, therefore, that, in 2012, after the LDP
had returned to power, the government declined to join an
international statement declaring that nuclear weapons are
inhumane and should not be used under any circumstances.
Yet in 2013 Japan signed a similarly styled joint statement;
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Japan | 77
the incorporation of a few word changes to the text gave the
government a fig leaf to justify the shift. At the same time,
Japan signed a separate statement that noted the importance of
recognising the security dimension, as well as the humanitarian
concern, in the nuclear-weapons debate. Japan was the only
country to sign both statements.30
The apparent contradiction of simultaneously promoting
nuclear disarmament and nuclear deterrence might be seen
to reflect psychological yin–yang impulses seeking both peace
and protection. Japanese thinking on disarmament and deterrence
has become more integrated, however. Today, both
are rooted in fear of China. Promoting nuclear disarmament
and transparency are tools for the Foreign Ministry to seek to
contain China’s nuclear build-up.31
Evolving defence policies
Many Koreans and Chinese believe that recent changes in
Japan’s defence policies could lead to a change in the nonnuclear
stance as well. In recent years, Japan has shed most of
the constraints that defined its defence policy for the majority
of the Cold War era.32
A prohibition on foreign deployment
was lifted in 1992 to enable the JSDF to join a UN peacekeeping
mission to Cambodia. Although JSDF peacekeeping forces
have typically been deployed unarmed, in 2004–06 Japan sent
an armed JSDF contingent to assist the US-led reconstruction
of Iraq in a humanitarian role. A ban on power projection was
effectively loosened in 2001 to procure in-flight refuelling
tankers and later to produce helicopter destroyers, which are
akin to aircraft carriers. And a ban on the military use of space
was changed in 2008 to enable Japan to employ sophisticated
military satellites.
In the defence development realm, a ban on joint military
research was lifted in 2003 when Japan announced that it would
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78 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
explore the joint development of ballistic-missile defence with
the US, and an arms export ban was lifted in 2014, when Japan
announced it would supply missile interceptor parts to the US
and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, subordination of the
defence establishment was changed in 2007 when the JDA was
upgraded to a ministry.
A former South Korean ambassador to Japan, Kwon Chulhyun,
concluded in 2012 that Japan was ‘getting rid of the
obstacles one by one as the opportunity offers. In the long term,
I guess it is preparing for a nuclear weapon.’33
All of these changes have made Japan more of a ‘normal’
military power commensurate with its leading economic status.
The evolution has accelerated since Abe became prime minister
for the second time in December 2012. In particular, he has
sought to push through the reinterpretation of the constitution
to allow exercise of the right of collective self-defence if an ally
is attacked. The reinterpretation, as decided ad referendum
by the cabinet in July 2014, to allow use of force in defence of
an ally is constrained by three conditions. There must be: 1) a
clear danger to the Japanese people’s right to ‘life, liberty and
happiness’; 2) no other appropriate means to repel an attack
and ensure Japan’s survival; and 3) a limit on the use of force
to the minimum extent necessary. The reinterpretation was
approved by the Diet in September 2015, but not without an
intense political fight and more than 60% opposition in public
opinion polls.
The nuclear taboo is of another order of magnitude and
remainsfirm.AspoliticalscientistEtelSolingennotes,becoming
‘normal’ is not necessarily a prelude to becoming ‘nuclear’; for
the vast majority of states, ‘normal’ means being non-nuclear.34
According to a close adviser to Abe, the prime minister has no
interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.35
Even if Abe wanted
to, Japanese political and societal dynamics would constrain
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Japan | 79
any such impulse, short of some catalysing event. As a group
of leading American foreign-policy experts concluded after an
October 2014 visit to Japan: ‘the Japanese public and much of
the ruling elite continue to be strongly unwilling to take risks
or to significantly change a tradition of peaceful development
and positive contributions to both the region and the international
community that has become firmly rooted in Japan over
the past 70 years.’36
Nuclear hedging
For much of the past half-century, Japan has had a quasi
nuclear-hedging strategy, usually implicit in nature, which is
the flip side of its posture of nuclear restraint. Some analysts
disagree with the hedging interpretation. International relations
scholar Jacques Hymans sees Japan’s nuclear policy
mix as the result of ‘powerful forces of inertia’, for example.37
But many policymakers appear to quietly understand the
hedging strategy. Japanese officials occasionally express it
explicitly, with varying degrees of frankness and political
acceptability.
As with Sato’s 1964 comments about seeking nuclear parity
with China, the hedging strategy is often seen as a means
of diplomatic leverage. In an internal 1971 personal memo,
Takuya Kubo, a senior JDA official, contended:
If Japan prepares latent nuclear capability by which
it would enable Japan to develop significant nuclear
armament at any time … the United States would hope
to sustain the Japan–US security system by providing
a nuclear guarantee to Japan, because otherwise,
the US would be afraid of a rapid deterioration of
the stability in … international relations triggered by
nuclear proliferation.38
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80 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
In his memoirs published in 1983, Kishi wrote in connection
with a visit to the newly established Japan Atomic Energy
Research Institute at Tokai in January 1958 that while Japan
would concentrate on the peaceful uses of its nuclear technologies,
‘as the level of our nuclear technologies increases for
peaceful purposes, it will increase for military purposes, too’.
He added that ‘even without nuclear weapons, Japan would
have a stronger say in the international arena – as in arms
control and nuclear test-ban issues – by improving its nuclear
latency potential’.39
At other times, hedging statements have more directly
foreseen a potential need for nuclear weapons. In 1967, ambassador
to the US Takeso Shimoda sparked a controversy by
saying that, because the evolution of China’s nuclear threat
could not be predicted, ‘the choice of whether or not Japan
may become a nuclear weapon state should be left in the hands
of Japan’s future generation’.40
The next year, agriculture and
forestry minister Tadao Kuraishi had to resign for advocating
an indigenous nuclear deterrent to protect Japanese fishermen
from the perceived Soviet threat.41
His was a unique case of a
cabinet member calling for nuclear-weapons development, not
just hedging.
In the past two decades, Japanese leaders have spoken
more frequently about a nuclear capability. In July 1993, in the
context of stating support for indefinite extension of the NPT,
foreign minister Kabun Muto reminded Japanese reporters of
the Article X withdrawal clause. He added: ‘If North Korea
develops nuclear weapons and that becomes a threat to Japan,
first there is the nuclear umbrella of the US upon which we
can rely. But if it comes down to a crunch, possessing the will
that “we can do it” is important.’42
In 1994, in response to a
question in the Diet, prime minister Tsutomu Hata made an
unprecedented statement to the effect that ‘Japan has the capa-
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Japan | 81
bility to produce nuclear weapons’. Backtracking from what
was said to be a ‘slip of the tongue’, the Foreign Ministry issued
a statement saying ‘mere possession of high-level nuclear technology
and scientific technology does not signify the capability
of producing nuclear weapons’. It then added: ‘Japan does
not have any expertise or experience in producing nuclear
weapons. This means that Japan does not have the capability
to produce them.’43
Four years later, former prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa
referred to the latent capability when he wrote: ‘It is in the interest
of the United States, so long as it does not wish to see Japan
withdraw from the NPT and develop its own nuclear deterrent,
to maintain its alliance with Japan and continue to provide a
nuclear umbrella.’44
Hosokawa’s statement reflects a consistent
Japanese preference for relying on the US nuclear umbrella over
indigenous nuclear development. It also repeated a consistent
pattern of using the recessed nuclear capability as leverage to
ensure the continued strength of the US commitment.45
Soon after Hosokawa’s article was published, North Korea’s
test launch of a Taepodong missile that overflew Japan sparked
a debate about nuclearisation in Japan. Prime Minister Keizo
Obuchi reiterated the nation’s non-nuclear weapons principles,
but the next year right-wing parliamentary vice minister
of defense Shingo Nishimura said in an interview that ‘Japan
may be better off if it armed itself with nuclear weapons’ and
that failure to do so left the nation vulnerable to international
‘rape’, comments for which he was dismissed.46
Comments about nuclear hedging accelerated in 2002. In
April, leader of the opposition Liberal Party Ichiro Ozawa said
he told Chinese leaders in Beijing that, ‘if Japan desires, it can
possess thousands of nuclear warheads. Japan has enough
plutonium in use at its nuclear plants for three to four thousand.
If that should happen, we wouldn’t lose [to China] in
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terms of military strength.’47
In May, chief cabinet secretary
Yasuo Fukuda suggested that Japan might reconsider its
decade-long commitment to the three nuclear principles if the
international security environment changed dramatically for
the worse.48
In June, prime minister Junichiro Koizumi sought
to close the issue by calling Fukuda’s comments a ‘slip of the
tongue’ and repeating the non-nuclear principles, but he added
a hedging comment: ‘it is significant that although we could
have them, we don’t.’49
The next year both Fukuda and deputy
chief cabinet secretary Shinzo Abe said that, while the cabinet
had no intention of developing nuclear weapons at present,
future makers of foreign policy should have the right to decide
that question.50
Kyorin University professor Tadae Takubo and former
Japanese ambassador to Poland, Nagao Hyodo, made the point
more bluntly when they wrote that international politics was
dominated by the principle of ‘never say never’ and that Japan
should never say that it will never have nuclear weapons.51
North Korea’s nuclear test in October 2006 ended Japan’s
taboo on discussing nuclear-weapons options. Foreign minister
Taro Aso called for a public debate on the conditions that
should trigger reconsideration of the non-nuclear policy. His
main intent, however, was probably to elicit US confirmation
of its extended-deterrence commitment, which indeed was
dutifully repeated by secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in a
visit to Tokyo that month.
In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, when
many Japanese questioned the merits of nuclear power, former
defence minister Shigeru Ishiba said ‘We should keep [the]
nuclear fuel cycle, which is backed by enrichment and reprocessing’
in order to maintain ‘technical deterrence’.52
In two
editorials, Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest circulation newspaper,
echoed Ishiba’s call, saying that the nation’s stockpile
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Japan | 83
of plutonium ‘functioned diplomatically as a potential nuclear
deterrent’.53
Before becoming defence minister in 2012, Satoshi
Morimoto similarly said that commercial nuclear power reactors
have ‘very great defensive deterrent functions’.54
Such statements are sometimes referred to as a ‘bomb in the
basement’ deterrence strategy, to keep potential adversaries
such as China and North Korea guessing about Japan’s capa-
bilities.55
As one Japanese defence official told this author, ‘if
China thinks the reprocessing is a deterrent, fine’.56
The hedging
strategy also requires maintenance of the capabilities. In 2014,
a well-placed Japanese foreign-ministry official was reported
to have informally asked US deputy secretary of energy Daniel
Poneman to continue to allow Japan to reprocess plutonium
because it was important for both energy security and national
security. The official said US continued support for reprocessing
was a fundamental of the US–Japan alliance.57
Capabilities
While the intentions behind Japan’s nuclear-hedging strategy
are often kept hidden, the capabilities are clearly visible. Japan
has the largest number of civilian nuclear facilities of any nonweapons
state and is the only one with complete fuel-cycle
technologies, including both enrichment and reprocessing.
A robust space launch programme adds a potential delivery
capability to the nuclear latency. These capabilities are all dualuse;
in the post-war period Japan has never been known to
pursue any exclusively military-related nuclear technologies.58
It has no known expertise in nuclear weaponisation or military
involvement in nuclear technology. The transparency of
the nuclear activities and the nation’s unsullied record of cooperation
with the IAEA provide confirmation that Japan does
not have a nuclear-weapons programme. The quasi-hedging
strategy only keeps options open for the future. Nuclear-policy
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expert James Acton calls this strategy ‘existential hedging’:
maintaining a nuclear infrastructure without a deliberate
policy to enable rapid proliferation.59
In this sense, nuclear hedging was a secondary rationale
behind the nuclear capabilities. Energy security was the primary
purpose.60
For a country with no oil and limited coal reserves,
nuclear energy was seized upon in the 1950s as a secure energy
source. It was a far better means of seeking energy autonomy
than the expansionist policies of the late 1930s and the disastrous
war Japan began in 1941 to escape theAllied oil embargo.61
The first nuclear power plant was built in Tokai in 1966, and
before the Fukushima accident in 2011, 54 were operating. By
1998, nuclear power contributed 37% of the nation’s electricity
generation. This percentage fell to 29% in the following few
years but was expected to increase to 40% or more by 2017.
After Fukushima, however, all of Japan’s nuclear reactors were
shut down for safety checks. In mid-August 2015, just one was
re-started. The cost of substituting more fossil fuel imports was
US$156 million in the first three years after the accident.62
Closed fuel cycle
From the beginning in the mid-1950s, Japan’s nuclear energy
policy aimed to achieve a fully independent closed fuel cycle
through recycling of spent fuel, in line with the practice of
the US, its main technology supplier.63
Japan saw the closed
fuel cycle as a route toward energy self-sufficiency and as a
hedge against global shortages of uranium, which in the early
years of the nuclear age was wrongly assumed to be scarce. A
more recent justification is to reduce the amount of spent fuel
requiring disposal.
As a long-term goal, Japan aspires to develop fast-breeder
reactors (FBR) that would produce more plutonium than
consumed and thereby reduce uranium requirements by up
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Japan | 85
to 60 times while also reducing nuclear waste.64
As part of the
research and development (R&D) programme to develop a
commercial FBR, in the 1970s and 1980s small prototype reactors
were built in Ibaraki prefecture (an area formerly called
Joyo, after which the reactor was named) and Fukui prefecture
(where the reactor was named Monju).
The FBR project experienced severe technical trouble,
however, and, like fast-breeder aspirations in other countries,
shows no prospect of ever becoming commercially viable. In
1995, a leak of the molten sodium that was used to cool the
extremely hot reactor stopped operation of Monju, which
has remained closed ever since due to safety concerns and a
high-court ruling (molten sodium is a poisonous element that
explodes upon contact with water.) Operations at Joyo were
suspended in 2007 after an accident and have not yet been
resumed. In 2014, the government decided to continue the fuel
cycle programme but to use Monju as ‘an international research
centre for technological development, such as reducing the
amount and toxic level of radioactive waste and technologies
related to nuclear non-proliferation’ rather than as a prototype
for a commercial FBR.65
Meanwhile, Japan is proceeding with an interim plan, introduced
in 1997, to recycle uranium and plutonium in spent fuel,
involving separating it at reprocessing plants, and then mixing
plutonium with uranium to produce mixed-oxide (MOX)
fuel. This fuel would be burned in 16 to 18 specially designed
power reactors, saving about half of the uranium that would
otherwise be used.66
The reprocessing project and MOX fuel
plans have also run into major trouble, resulting in repeated
delays and massive cost overruns.67
Seemingly insolvable technological
and political problems have also resulted in a huge
stockpile of plutonium which, being weapons-usable, gives
rise to proliferation concerns.
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86 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
Uranium-enrichment technology provides Japan with
a potential second path to a bomb. R&D on gas centrifuge
uranium enrichment for civilian purposes began in 1979 at a
demonstration plant in Ningyo-toge in Okayama prefecture.As
with reprocessing, the purpose was to close the fuel cycle and
thereby give Japan a degree of nuclear fuel independence. The
first-generation industrial-sized enrichment was established in
Rokkasho with a capacity of up to 1,050 ton-separative work
units (SWU)/year. It operated between 1992 and 2010 but
was never commercially viable as the centrifuges, with rotors
made of maraging steel, repeatedly malfunctioned. A second
enrichment plant using composite carbon-fibre rotors began
operations at Rokkasho in 2011. The 1,500 ton-SWU capacity of
the plant was to be sufficient for about one-third of Japan’s preFukushima
low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel requirements.
The LEU produced there is not commercially competitive
with prices on the international market. Yet the plant has been
justified because it also has the purpose of further enriching
the 700kg of 1.3% LEU that would otherwise be unused as a
by-product of reprocessing.
US support for reprocessing
An experimental plutonium reprocessing plant was built at
Tokai in 1975 and began operation in 1977. It has a capacity
annually to process 210 tonnes of spent fuel and to produce
about 450kg of separated plutonium. After the plant was
finished at a cost of US$170m and 14 years of effort, a diplomatic
issue threatened to prevent it from operating at all. In
1976 the US, which until then had promoted plutonium reprocessing
for its recycling benefits, changed its policy. India’s 1974
test of a nuclear device using plutonium produced and separated
in ostensibly civilian facilities had shocked the US nuclear
and foreign-policy communities. Plans by France and Germany
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Japan | 87
to sell reprocessing technology to Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan,
South Korea and Taiwan, all of whom were seen as potential
proliferators, exacerbated concerns. With plutonium management
becoming a political issue in the 1976 election, president
Gerald Ford embargoed the export of reprocessing and enrichment
technology and called on all states to accept a three-year
moratorium on reprocessing. Jimmy Carter, who succeeded
Ford in 1977, strengthened the policy shift, deferring domestic
commercial reprocessing indefinitely and indicating that the US
would seek to persuade other nations to follow suit.68
The policy shift came at an inopportune time for Japan,
which was seeking consent to reprocess US-origin spent fuel at
Tokai, and also permission to transfer excess spent fuel to the
UK and France for reprocessing. When prime minister Takeo
Fukuda raised the issue on a Washington visit, Carter handed
him an internal report that recommended ceasing reprocessing.
Carter’s stance was seen as a threat to Japan’s energy security
and as a betrayal of America’s previous encouragement of the
nation’s closed fuel cycle plans. According to Kumao Kaneko,
a former Foreign Ministry official involved in the talks with
the US, one reason Japan pressed for permission to reprocess
plutonium was to ensure that Japan had a weapons option.69
Japanese officials continued to lobby furiously and persuaded
US Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield to weigh in personally
with Carter to seek a compromise in order to preserve the
health of the alliance. Gerard Smith, former director of the Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency who was brought in to lead
the negotiations with Japan, reminded Carter that threatening
Japan’s energy security in 1941 by cutting off its oil supplies had
led to war.70
It was also recalled that Japan was persuaded to
sign the NPT only after its access to reprocessing was assured.
Carter relented and, after a study by the two countries of
potentially more proliferation-resistant reprocessing did not
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88 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
yield any practical alternatives, he agreed to allow Tokai to
reprocess spent fuel over which the US exercised residual
control for two years and 99 tonnes per year. A two-year
International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation study did not
come up with good alternatives to conventional reprocessing,
so Washington extended the agreement three times.71
When Ronald Reagan came to office, in 1981, he reversed
US plutonium policy again, lifting Carter’s ban on commercial
reprocessing activities in the US. In order to keep Japan firmly
in the anti-Communist camp, he also approved a new policy
on foreign reprocessing of plutonium, subject to certain statutory
conditions concerning safeguards and physical security.
In 1982 the US and Japan began talks on negotiating a new
nuclear cooperation agreement that was required in order to
meet new conditions of the US Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act
of 1978. The resulting agreement, which went into effect in
1988, proved to be advantageous to Japan by granting prior
consent for reprocessing of all US-controlled (or ‘obligated’)
material. Reagan’s policy principle was that countries that
had made huge investments in reprocessing facilities and had
a sterling non-proliferation record were to be given advance
consent.72
Permission was also granted to Japan to send spent fuel to
France and the UK for reprocessing. Some of the recovered
plutonium and uranium was eventually returned as MOX.
In the absence of a functioning breeder reactor and the delay
in operating of light-water reactors that could use MOX fuel,
however, the plutonium oxide served no immediate purpose
in Japan. More than 75% of the nation’s separated plutonium
remains in France and the UK, under contract to be returned
by 2020.
When the Democratic Party recaptured the White House
in 1993, Bill Clinton issued a policy statement that said: ‘the
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Japan | 89
United States does not encourage the civil use of plutonium
and, accordingly, does not itself engage in plutonium reprocessing
for either nuclear power or nuclear explosive purposes.
The United States, however, will maintain its existing commitments
regarding the use of plutonium in civil nuclear programs
in Western Europe and Japan.’73
The Clinton administration
concluded an agreement with Euratom in which the US gave
prior consent to reprocessing along the same lines the Reagan
administration had given Japan. These policies have remained
in place since.
For both non-proliferation and nuclear security reasons, the
US has encouraged Japan not to increase its large plutonium
stockpile, which is also Japan’s stated policy.74
Washington
has also persuaded Japan to return hundreds of kilograms of
weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium that
were transferred to Japan between 1957 and 1994 for civilian
research applications under the Atoms for Peace programme,
mostly for a Fast Critical Assembly (FCA). The UK also
provided 200kg of 93% HEU for use at the FCA. Some of the
HEU was returned to the US in small doses over the years. 75
The remaining amount, reportedly 214.5kg as well as 331kg
of plutonium, is to be returned by the time of the 31 March–1
April 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.
The US–Japan nuclear cooperation agreement of 1988 comes
up for renewal in 2018, although extension is automatic unless
either side decides on termination. To protect against any US
inclination to re-examine the conditions and change its policy,
some Japanese nuclear bureaucrats argue internally that the
government must have a solid plan by 2018 to reduce the
plutonium stockpile.76
One strategy favoured by many technocrats
is to give development priority to ‘fast reactors’ that
can consume large amounts of plutonium. Another option is to
operate Rokkasho at a lower tempo than now planned.
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Reprocessing plans
US policy under Reagan paved the way for operation of
the much larger reprocessing facility under construction at
Rokkasho since 1993 at a cost to date of US$22bn, three times
the original estimate. It has the capacity to reprocess 800 tonnes
of spent fuel annually, about 80% of the full amount of spent
fuel from the 54 nuclear power plants that were operating
before the Fukushima disaster. The fissile plutonium output
would be 4.4 tonnes/year (or 8 tonnes of total plutonium).
Rokkasho was to have begun operations in 1996, but has faced
repeated delays due to technical, legal and political complications.
Ongoing safety licensing procedures that were made
more stringent after the Fukushima disaster have meant further
delay. Meanwhile, it was decided in 2014 to permanently shut
down the Tokai reprocessing plant, which had ceased operations
in 2006.
Once Rokkasho begins operating, the operators plan to run
it at a reduced tempo, to reprocess 880 tonnes of spent fuel in
the first three years, producing about 4–5 tonnes of separated
plutonium. In the same plant, the plutonium will be combined
with uranium to produce MOX fuel. Doing this ‘under a single
roof’ is a proliferation and security precaution in order to minimise
the potential for diversion or theft of plutonium in transit
between the processes.77
The fuel fabrication is not expected to
begin operation until 2018 at the earliest. If reprocessing starts
before the MOX is fabricated and then irradiated, the stockpile
of separated plutonium will increase.
Rokkasho was built in close consultation with the IAEA, so
that the latest monitoring tools could be installed in the process
line during construction.78
Notwithstanding any hedging intentions,
Rokkasho is obviously intended for non-military use for
the present. As the largest facility ever placed under IAEA safeguards,
however, Rokkasho will present safeguards challenges
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Japan | 91
in terms of both cost – the US$10m annual safeguards bill will
largely be borne by the Japanese government – and confidence
in verification. As little as a 1% error in measurement of the
plutonium would be equivalent to three bombs’ worth.79
The
IAEA is thus readying a basket of verification techniques and
technologies to supplement traditional measurement and
accountancy methods.
Since 1991, Japan has had an official policy of no surplus
plutonium. Any plutonium produced has to have a specific
peaceful purpose. In practice, however, Japan has a huge
surplus. As of the end of 2014, the plutonium stockpile
amounted to 47.8 tonnes, 37 tonnes of which is held in
France and the UK.80
Technical delays in the breeder reactor
programme and in developing MOX fuel meant that accumulated
separated plutonium was justified as working stocks. The
MOX fuel fabrication plant is now scheduled for completion in
October 2017. In light of the uncertainties, a ‘New Basic Energy
Plan’, announced in April 2014, repeated the no-surplus-plutonium
policy but said the policy would be implemented with
‘strategic flexibility’.
Use of the word ‘strategic’ in the plan had no connotation
of national defence considerations but meant that the surplus
will grow once Rokkasho comes online. Before the Fukushima
disaster, plans called for 16–18 MOX-burning reactors collectively
to consume about 5 tonnes of plutonium annually, which
would have gradually reduced the stockpile. Operation of a
new kind of reactor at Ohma would burn another 1.1 tonnes/
year and Monju would consume 0.4 tonnes annually. But in
light of more stringent safety requirements after Fukushima,
less than half of the MOX reactors are expected to come back
online. Utilities have applied to re-start seven of them, but even
some of these face legal and political obstacles due to opposition
by local governments that are alarmed by the negative
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connotations of plutonium. New safety checks have also postponed
the planned start-up of the Ohma reactor to around
2022, operation of which is also blocked by a lawsuit by the
Hakodate city government. As noted above, Monju will not
be used as part of the recycling programme. Masakatsu Ota,
an investigative journalist who specialises in nuclear matters,
judges that under the best scenario, only four MOX-burning
reactors will come online, consuming no more than 1.6 tonnes/
year of plutonium.81
This is more pessimistic than most estimates,
but it is very likely that operation of Rokkasho even at
a reduced tempo initially will produce more plutonium than is
consumed.
In addition to its inability to reduce the plutonium surplus,
the MOX reactor plan is beset by daunting problems. Japan’s
MOXfuelcostsuptoninetimesmorethanregularnuclearfuel.82
It would be far cheaper to dispose of the plutonium through
vitrification and burial.83
For technical reasons, Rokkasho
cannot reprocess the spent fuel from MOX reactors, so an additional
reprocessing plant would be needed, but currently there
is no realistic plan to build one. Separating plutonium for MOX
fuel also has inherent proliferation and security risks due to the
potential for diversion or theft during processing and storage,
even though the transportation risk is reduced by producing
MOX under the same roof.
Although long-term direct disposal of spent fuel is logically
preferable to reprocessing, no local government in Japan
is willing to host a repository. Local politics is also a driver
behind the Rokkasho start-up plan. If the facility is terminated,
Rokkasho village and Aomori, the prefecture in which it is
located, threaten not to accept any more reprocessing waste
from France and the UK and to insist on removal of all the
spent fuel already stored there. In 2011–12, when the shortlived
Democratic Party-led government sought to end both
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Japan | 93
nuclear power and reprocessing, the Aomori governor essentially
blackmailed the central government into continuing the
reprocessing plan.84
Meanwhile, spent fuel is kept at fuel storage pools at Japan’s
reactors, some of which are close to full. Local governments of
jurisdictions surrounding these reactors are reluctant to allow
intermediate dry-cask storage, which can keep larger amounts
of spent fuel securely stored for up to 100 years. Ideally,
they should be persuaded to do so and Rokkasho operations
postponed until there is a realistic plan to reduce the plutonium
stockpile. Among the many experts who have studied
this complex set of problems, the Princeton University-based
International Panel on Fissile Materials in 2013 proposed a
thoughtful road map on ways in which Japan could move out of
its reprocessing trap.85
Other experts have suggested that Japan
should seek to persuade the UK and France to take ownership
of the Japanese plutonium stored there,86
that the law should
be changed to regard the plutonium from spent fuel as a waste
product rather than as an asset,87
and that Japan should put
excess plutonium under the custody of the IAEA.88
When the new nuclear energy policy was being formulated
in spring 2014, some of those involved sought to include
a corollary line that the government would take responsibility
to reduce the plutonium stockpile. The timing was not
propitious, however, because it would have appeared to be in
response to criticism from China.89
In February that year, the
Chinese Foreign Ministry had seized upon what was intended
to be a good-news story of Japan repatriating weapons-grade
plutonium and HEU to the US to criticise Japan’s plutonium
stockpile.90
In light of the engineering and economic failure of Japan’s
closed fuel cycle, one Japanese policymaker told the current
author that ‘reprocessing is dead; the facilities are there but the
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policy is no longer possible’.91
Although most Japanese bureaucrats,
scientists and politicians associated with the nuclear
programme strongly support reprocessing, some Japanese
nuclear experts rue the decisions over the years to proceed
down this path. In meetings with South Korean counterparts,
they are known to recommend that Korea learns from Japan’s
mistake and does not pursue reprocessing. The remorse they
feel is not held widely enough, however, for Japan to abandon
the reprocessing programme.
If Japan were to abandon reprocessing, it would constitute
a signal contribution to global non-proliferation. A group
of distinguished US and Japanese non-proliferation experts
recently concluded that Japan’s policies have a significant
international impact and that, consequently, Japan should give
global non-proliferation factors more consideration in what to
date has been a debate based on domestic matters.92
A decision
to give up the sunk costs of the Rokkasho reprocessing
plant does not appear likely, however. The prevailing mood
toward start-up of Rokkasho is ‘business as usual’. This leads
concerned foreign observers to ask if the reason is for a nuclear
hedge.
Weapons usability of separated plutonium
The 11 tonnes of separated plutonium stored in Japan is theoretically
enough for nearly 1,400 nuclear weapons based on the
IAEA criterion of 8kg of plutonium needed to manufacture a
nuclear weapon. The theoretical number is actually closer to
3,000, given that nuclear weapons can be made with as little as
4kg of plutonium each. In terms of technology, there is no doubt
that reactor-grade plutonium can be used for nuclear weapons.
The US proved this in 1962 with a successful nuclear test using
reactor-grade plutonium.93
The high level of radiation and heat
emission from reactor-grade plutonium makes it dangerous to
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Japan | 95
use, however, and the higher levels of the isotope Pu-240 can
lead to pre-ignition and a resultant low yield. Reactor-grade
plutonium has thus never been used for weapons.
Some might argue that the reactor-grade plutonium could
be used in a crash programme if Japan were in a hurry to
produce weapons. In particular, the spent fuel that is removed
from the first reload of each reactor has much lower burn-up
than the average and thus would be more suitable for
weapons. It would be more rational, however, to use supergrade
plutonium from the Joyo and Monju reactors. About 22kg
of unseparated plutonium is available from production in the
blankets in the Joyo reactor in 1977–78 and 62kg from Monju.94
The purity is higher than weapons-grade. It is safeguarded and
could not be diverted without the IAEA knowing. Additional
weapons-grade plutonium could be produced by inserting a
uranium blanket around the core of any other reactor or by
simply operating light-water reactors for about 50 days. The
low burn-up spent fuel thus produced could be separated in a
small reprocessing plant that could be built relatively quickly
given Japan’s prior experience. A hot cell at Tokai could also
be used for reprocessing, although its capacity is limited to
about 2kg/year.95
It is not likely that the Rokkasho reprocessing
plant itself would be used, given its inappropriately large size,
the need for remodelling if used for weapons purposes and
because the facility would probably be deemed to be necessary
for civilian reprocessing.
Rocket and other technologies
Japan’s nuclear-hedging strategy is reinforced by space-launchvehicle
technologies that with further development could be
applied to provide a delivery platform for a nuclear weapon.
The three-stage solid-fuel M-V rocket that was developed
in 1989 had a 1.8 tonne payload and a thrust on par with US
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intercontinental ballistic missiles.96
When the programme was
discontinued in 2006 on cost grounds, some conservative Diet
members argued that it should be maintained for its potential
military utility.97
The M-V rockets were not designed for atmospheric
re-entry, but re-entry technology has been developed
since 1994 and was employed to bring the unmanned spacecraft
Hayabusa back to earth in 2010. A controlled re-entry of
the upper stage of a liquid-fuel H-IIB SLV was also successfully
demonstrated in 2011.98
In addition, with modifications the
SM-3 Block IIA missile-defence interceptor that Japan is developing
could be used to launch a medium-range ballistic missile.
There is no evidence to suggest that these technologies have
been studied in Japan for ballistic missile applications.99
The
rocket designs are not well suited for effective use as ballistic
missiles, being too large, for example, for use against nearby
China and lacking necessary guidance control.100
As the
American authors of a seminal work on the subject put it in
2003, ‘the contention that Japan’s SLV program is a disguise for
pursuit of a ballistic missile capability is simply absurd’.101
Some
Japanese do claim a hedging purpose, however. LieutenantGeneral,
Retd Toshiyuki Shikata, who worked as an adviser
to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in 2011, said Hayabusa
‘sent a quiet message that Japan’s ballistic missile capability is
credible’.102
Even though the M-V has been discontinued for ten years,
the space launch programme does provide the technological
basis for developing a ballistic missile for military use.
American defence policy expert James Schoff estimates that it
could be done within two years.103
In a 2009 study, Schoff noted
several other nuclear-weapons-related technologies that have
been perfected in Japan’s industrial and research communities.
These technologies include high-speed framing radiography,
heavy-metal shock physics, explosive shaping and radiation
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Japan | 97
hydrodynamics. These all contribute to Japan’s nuclear latency.
But Schoff found no indication of an orchestrated programme
to develop these technologies as part of a purposeful hedging
strategy and he noted that some key weapons technologies,
such as metallurgical knowledge, were lacking. He also found
that Japanese scientists were keen to demonstrate that they are
not engaged in any questionable research and that a wide gulf
existed between Japan’s scientific research community and the
defence establishment.104
Among other technologies necessary for a survivable nuclear
deterrent, Japan lacks submarines that could be used to launch
ballistic missiles. Given the nation’s lack of geographic strategic
depth, submarine-launched missiles are often deemed to
be necessary to provide a second-strike capability. It also has
been noted that Japan has no expertise in bomb and warhead
design. These technical obstacles could all be surmountable,
at least at the initial stage of nuclear deterrence. Rather than
submarines, for example, Japan could mount nuclear-armed
missiles on cruise ships, or take advantage of its mountainous
terrain for tunnelling to hide missiles, as China has done.105
The
greater constraint might be political: summoning the collective
national will to establish the legal, bureaucratic and political
infrastructure necessary for a nuclear deterrent posture.
Break-out timelines
Among the 185 non-nuclear-weapons state parties to the NPT,
Japan may have the shortest break-out time. Just how fast Japan
could dash to build a bomb is a matter of considerable conjecture,
much of it unsupported by factual analysis. Hyperbole is
casually employed to suggest that Japan is just a ‘screwdriver’s
turn’ away from the bomb.106
When he headed Russia’s Foreign
Intelligence Service in the early 1990s, Yevgeny Primakov said
that Japan could make a nuclear device in five weeks.107
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In Western circles, it is commonly suggested that Japan
could produce a nuclear weapon in as little as six months.108
American arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis assiduously
sought to track down the derivation of the six-month claim and
concluded that it is without technical basis. It appears to date
from an offhand statement by a ‘Japanese strategic thinker’ in
1976 as cited in Richard Halloran’s 1991 book, Chrysanthemum
and Sword Revisited: Is Japanese Militarism Resurgent? Lewis
quips that ‘six months’ is shorthand for meaning ‘fairly soon’,
akin to the biblical phrase ’40 days and 40 nights’ as meaning
a long time.109
The six-month common wisdom estimate based on a crude
bomb contrasts with a Japanese internal study in 2006, which
calculated that it would take at least three to five years before
Japancouldgointotrialproductionofaminiaturisedwarhead.110
Most US intelligence estimates have also been more cautious. A
1966 US National Intelligence Estimate concluded it would take
approximately two years to produce and test a nuclear device,
including the time needed to build a reprocessing plant and
metal reduction facility.111
A more extensive estimate the next
year concluded that after the first device it would take three to
five more years to develop a warhead compatible with a reengineered
satellite launch vehicle.112
One outlier to the cautious
US intelligence community assessments was a 1999 report by
the US Defense Intelligence Agency, which breezily concluded
that ‘Germany and Japan, which have developed their technology
base and fissile material production base in support of
their civilian nuclear power programs, could develop a nuclear
warhead within a year should the political decision be made to
pursue such a capability’.113
The Japanese and American government timeline estimates
suggest a thorough, careful process in accord with Japan’s usual
way of tackling technological challenges. In a crisis mode, the
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Japan | 99
timeline for producing reliable nuclear weapons could probably
be shortened to one or two years, especially if reliability
and accuracy were less important considerations. This is the
general assessment of American analysts who have studied the
issue with an eye to detail, although there is reasonable doubt
over timelines.114
The need to develop a weapons design from
scratch – unless it could be obtained from an ally or via the
black market – could itself take a year or more if Japan sought
a sophisticated weapon on par with China’s.115
The technically
derived timelines are all artificial, however, because they do
not account for the legal and political obstacles that would
have to be overcome.116
IfJapanweretoseektoproducenuclearweapons,plutonium
is usually regarded as the most likely pathway. The possibility
of uranium enrichment must also be considered, however. It
might even be the preferred path if Japan were to seek nuclear
weapons quickly and did not need to miniaturise them. HEU
is easier to work with than high-burn-up plutonium and presents
no radiation concern and less risk of pre-ignition. If stealth
were required, uranium could be obtained from an old unused
mine and small dedicated facilities for milling, conversion and
enrichment. Japan might also seek to produce HEU via laser
isotope separation, a technology with which Japanese nuclear
scientists experimented before 2001, when government funding
was cut. The equipment and know-how remain.117
Potential motivations
If Japan were to go nuclear, it would be the result of a severe
deterioration in its security situation in the face of a strong
threat and a perception that Japan could no longer count on
America’s extended deterrence. A breakdown in the global
nuclear non-proliferation regime might add to the motivation.
Such a nightmare combination is unlikely in the foreseeable
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100 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
future. And even if one or more of the factors did materialise,
nuclearisation is far from inevitable.
In fact, each of these situations has arisen to a certain extent
over the past two and a half decades. When the Soviet threat
disappeared with the end of the Cold War, many Japanese
worried that the US would have less reason to extend a defence
commitment. China’s nuclear modernisation and growing
conventional capabilities threaten Japanese security, as does
North Korea’s nuclear posture. The emergence in Asia of three
new declared nuclear states since 1998 showed an unravelling
of the non-proliferation order. And yet Japan has steadfastly
remained non-nuclear. It looks set to remain so.
Japan’s continued non-nuclear status has belied many
a prediction. In the late 1960s, Herman Kahn insisted that
Japan would become a nuclear superpower within a decade
and a half because it would not be able to sit by as neighbours
acquired nuclear weapons. Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1972, John
Mearsheimer in 1992, and Kenneth Waltz in 1993118
were among
the realism theorists who predicted that Japanese nuclearisation
was a question of when, not if. This was also the view of
the US intelligence community in 1957.119
Many Japanese themselves
in the 1960s thought so, too. In a 1969 Yomiuri poll, for
example, 77% believed Japan would have nuclear weapons by
2000.120
Yet it did not happen. Let us examine each of the potential
motivations.
Korea
A 1995 report by what was then Japan’s Defense Agency said
that North Korean nuclearisation could cause Japan itself to
consider going nuclear in the future.121
Several foreign analysts
made similar predictions.122
Indeed, North Korea presents the
most imminent threat.123
Pyongyang’s medium-range Nodong
missiles presumably can carry nuclear and chemical weapons
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Japan | 101
and can hit most of Japan.124
A provocative article in the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) state media in
2013 listed Japanese cities within range of the missiles. North
Korea’s 1998 test of an intermediate-range Taepodong missile
that overflew northern Japan was a shock arguably comparable
to the impact on America of the Soviet launching of Sputnik in
1957.125
As noted above, the North’s October 2006 nuclear test
broke a public taboo on discussing a nuclear option for Japan.126
Yet what changed was merely the willingness to talk about
the issue; only a small number of politicians on the far right
actually called for Japan to go nuclear in response to the North
Korean provocation. An Asahi public opinion poll after the
test found that 82% of the Japanese population still wanted
Japan to stick to the non-nuclear principles.127
Having a nuclear
neighbour was not new, given that Japan had peacefully coexisted
with Soviet nuclear weapons since 1949 and with Chinese
nuclear weapons since 1964. The lack of hysteria probably
reflects confidence in the credibility of the US defence shield.128
In addition, Japan has its own non-nuclear options for defending
against nuclear-armed DPRK, including ballistic missile
defence platforms and a potential to acquire pre-emptive strike
capabilities.129
For many Japanese, North Korea’s failure to
resolve the matter of Japanese citizens abducted in the 1970s
and 1980s has been a higher priority than the nuclear threat.130
Strategic thinkers in Japan nevertheless remain concerned
about North Korea’s development programmes for intermediate
and intercontinental ballistic missiles and, most recently,
nuclear-armed submarines. A DPRK ability to strike the US
mainland could call into question the credibility of the US
deterrence. If North Koreans believed America might not be
willing to risk San Francisco for Tokyo, they would feel freer to
act aggressively toward Japan. As in the case of South Korea,
this concern about decoupling complicates extended deter-
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102 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
rence, although it should be noted that the US largely put this
issue to rest in Europe during the Cold War with the Soviet
Union.
Common wisdom in American security circles holds that
if either Japan or South Korea went nuclear, the other would
follow suit.131
This is probably the case if Japan were to go
first, for reasons cited in Chapter One. Yet the reverse does not
hold, given the deeper anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan and the
absence of any sense of a security threat emanating from the
Republic of Korea (ROK). Japan’s response to ROK nuclearisation
would depend on whether the US defence commitment
remained intact.
Yet Japanese do worry about the potential nuclear threat
from a unified Korea. In the words of one former Japanese
senior diplomat, a nuclear-armed unified Korea, combining
the South’s industrial capacity with the North’s A-bomb technology,
is the most realistic scenario that would spark Japanese
nuclearisation.132
At a recent seminar in Seoul, a Japanese
scholar listed three troubling unification scenarios: the worst
case for Japan is the emergence of a pro-China nuclear-armed
unified Korea; the second worst is a non-aligned nuclear-armed
unified Korea; the third worst is that North Korea’s nuclear
weapons go missing in a collapse and unification scenario.133
Other scholars say that, even though the ROK government
position is not to keep North Korea’s nuclear arsenal under
unification, the technology and know-how would be retained
and perhaps the fissile material, as in the case of South Africa.
Japanese also worry that some weapons and/or fissile material
might be secretly kept.134
US officials downplay this possibility,
insisting that, in the event of North Korean collapse, the
US would see to the thorough dismantlement of North Korea’s
nuclear weapons infrastructure and removal of its fissile mate-
rial.135
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Japan | 103
China
While North Korea presents the most imminent threat, China
is seen by Japan’s policy community as the source of more
serious and long-term danger. As noted above, China’s 1964
nuclear test sparked overt discussion in Tokyo of seeking a
nuclear equaliser. China’s recent nuclear force modernisation
has rekindled some of that psychological and strategic shock.
China is seen as much more likely than North Korea to force
US–Japanese nuclear decoupling.
Japan worries that the reality of mutual vulnerability
between China and the US will be treated by Beijing as equivalent
to Cold War-style mutual assured destruction that gives it
freedom to assert itself at the conventional level. Speaking at a
conference in Washington in March 2015, Sugio Takahashi from
Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies said: ‘If there is
a mutual vulnerability at the strategic level between US and
China, then conventional balance at the regional level matters,
and Japan has a disadvantage because of lack of geographic
depth. So Japan is concerned about the US accepting mutual
vulnerability. China’s nuclear policy aims to separate the
nuclear from the conventional domain.’136
Some Japanese
worry that cuts in the US nuclear force could tempt China to
seek to build up to nuclear parity,137
even though the disparity
in warheads today is in the order of 30:1 and China’s nuclear
posture is not based on keeping up with the nuclear superpow-
ers.
Japan’s sense of vulnerability vis-à-vis China relates in
greater part to Beijing’s growing conventional capabilities,
economic rise, defence budget increases and assertive behaviour.
China’s increasing anti-access/area-denial (A2AD)
capabilities, including the DF-21 and DF-26 ‘carrier killer’
missiles under development, are seen as undermining US
deterrence, even if they do not have the precision and lethality
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104 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
sometimes attributed to them.138
There is a concern that China
may be able over time to neutralise the naval and air superiority
that the US and Japan have enjoyed in the western Pacific.
A2AD capabilities that limit America’s ability to project power
in the region could undermine faith in America’s ability to
help defend Japan. Some Japanese security thinkers say that
if China’s conventional capabilities prevail, Japan may have to
consider a nuclear dimension of its own.139
US commitment
The single-most important variable affecting Japan’s continued
non-nuclear posture is the credibility of the US extended deterrence.
Credibility is a highly subjective criterion, depending on
perceptions more than reality. Over the years, US credibility
in the eyes of some Japanese variously has been threatened by
US loss in Vietnam, force reductions in the region, the Guam
Doctrine, withdrawal from the Philippines, inability to prevent
China from becoming nuclear-armed and failure to stop North
Korea’s nuclear programme. Polls in 1969, 1971 and 1996 found
that fewer than half of Japanese respondents believed the US
would come to Japan’s defence if it were exposed to extreme
danger.140
Most recently, the credibility of the nuclear umbrella
has come under question due to US defence budget austerity,
a reduced emphasis on nuclear deterrence, the failure to stop
Russian aggression in Ukraine and Obama’s decision not to
employ military force against Syria after it ignored his red line
on chemical weapons use.
Japanese strategists understand that the Ukraine and Syria
cases did not involve US security commitments. More analogous
to Japan’s situation would be US failure to come to the
assistance of a defence partner, such as if China threatened
Taiwan. The concerning scenario need not involve conflict. If
Washington were to cut Taiwan adrift in deference to greater
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Japan | 105
US national interests, as some American pundits have argued
(see Chapter Three), it would give the Japanese reason to question
the durability of the US commitment in their own case. The
fact that the US does not have a treaty commitment to defend
Taiwan, as distinct from the commitment to Japan, would
probably be lost in terms of perceptions. China’s ever-growing
dominance as a US trade partner141
already gives rise to nightmares
in Japan that the US might someday choose China over
Japan.
Some Japanese security specialists also worry about a
reduced role of nuclear weapons in the US deterrence commitment.
They want an ‘unshakeable nuclear umbrella’, as Abe
put it to Obama in 2013.142
During the 2008 US presidential
elections, the Foreign Ministry sent senior officials to both the
Democratic and Republican party campaigns asking that the
candidates not offer to cut deployable nuclear arms to below
1,000.143
Obama’s subsequent New START Treaty agreed to cut
only to 1,550 by 2018. But his commitment to a nuclear-free
world in his 5 April 2009 speech in Prague exacerbated Japan’s
nuclear policy ambivalence. On the one hand, most Japanese
citizens identified with the disarmament vision; yet Obama’s
emphasis on reducing the salience of nuclear weapons made
policymakers nervous about the strength of the nuclear
umbrella. In drafting the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR),
US officials took Japan’s concerns into account and rejected
language that would have said the ‘sole purpose’ of the US
nuclear arsenal is to deter nuclear attack on the US and its allies.
Instead, the review maintained the role of nuclear weapons
in deterring attacks by non-nuclear means that threaten vital
national interests.
In the run-up to the NPR, Washington-based Japanese
diplomats were reported to have argued semi-publicly that the
US should not retire the nuclear-armed, submarine-launched
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106 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM-N). Foreign minister
Okada sent a letter on 24 December 2009 to the US secretaries of
state and defense denying that this was Japanese government
policy and emphasising his own views in favour of nuclear
disarmament.144
The controversial Christmas Eve letter was
widely criticised by LDP politicians and the security establishment,
who claimed it undermined Japan’s national security.
They asked what would take the place of TLAM-N at the lower
rung of deterrence in the deterrence escalation ladder. The US
carefully considered these views and before formally retiring
the missiles in question, and as a substitute, committed to
modernising globally deployable nuclear-equipped bombers.145
AccordingtoJapanesedefencepolicyscholarMichitoTsuruoka,
‘There is a strong consensus in Tokyo that it was well informed
and adequately consulted regarding the NPR … As a result
of this, Tokyo’s concerns regarding the United States’ nuclear
posture, not least its adverse implications for extended deterrence,
have almost disappeared.’146
Sending nuclear-capable
B-52 bombers and B-2 stealth fighter-bombers over the Korean
Peninsula in March 2013 was additionally reassuring to Japan,
just as it was to South Korea.
The fact that US Navy surface ships and attack submarines
have not carried nuclear weapons since president George H.W.
Bush’s Nuclear Initiative in 1991 made the TLAM-N controversy
surreal. Given the taboo against nuclear weapons use
and the increasing accuracy and destructive power of conventional
weapons, successive US administrations have realised
that deterrence via conventional weapons is more realistic and
credible than via nuclear weapons.147
US operational capabilities
and the will to use them in defence of Japan are the
important criteria. This is why Japan worries about China’s
growing A2AD capabilities and assertiveness. America’s
apparent acquiescence to China’s demand that the US and the
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Japan | 107
ROK not conduct a joint naval exercise in the Yellow Sea after
the North Korean fatal sinking of the Cheonan corvette in March
2010 was a case in point.148
Japan is also concerned about China’s ‘grey-zone’ provocations
that are ‘neither pure peacetime nor contingencies
over territorial sovereignty and interest’, in the words of one
Japanese strategist,149
such as regularly sending coastguard
vessels to transgress Japan’s territorial waters around the
Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. To make the point that this is a matter
for extended deterrence, updated guidelines for bilateral
defence cooperation issued in April 2015 emphasise ‘seamless,
robust, flexible, and effective bilateral responses’.150
To the
Japanese, this means that the US could be involved from day
one of a grey-zone situation.151
Obama’s statement while visiting Japan in May 2014 that
Article V of the US–Japan Security Treaty applied to the
Senkakus because they are under Japan’s administration
provided helpful reassurance and went beyond what some
observers had expected in light of the US refusal to opine
on the final sovereignty on the Senkakus.152
Some analysts
thought Obama backtracked when he said at a follow-on press
conference that this commitment did not mean the US would
engage militarily every time international law was violated.153
Abe himself has made clear, however, that Japan has primary
responsibility to defend the Senkakus.154
Obama’s Asia-Pacific
‘pivot’ or ‘rebalancing’ strategy has also helped to reassure
Japan about commitment and staying power. The number
of US troops stationed in Japan – 54,500 as of 2015, including
naval forces – may decrease by 9,000 under one Okinawa
Marine redeployment plan, but the US military presence shows
no sign of fading.
In response to China’s A2AD challenges, the US
Department of Defense developed the concept of ‘Air–Sea
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108 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
battle’, now labelled Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver
in the Global Commons, which would entail strikes on the
Chinese mainland early in a conflict to eliminate China’s ‘kill
chain’ of radars, command-and-control centres, and missile
sites. Although the concept is controversial because of its
escalatory potential, it helps to signal to both allies and potential
adversaries that America’s extended deterrence will not
be undermined.155
Another way in which Washington has addressed Japanese
deterrence concerns is by institutionalising dialogue on
deterrence strategy and operations. Following up on useful
consultations prior to US release of the NPR in 2010, the US and
Japan that year established an Extended Deterrence Dialogue,
similar to one the US also began with South Korea. According
to Japanese officials, it has significantly contributed to sustaining
confidence in the credibility of the deterrence.156
US abandonment of Japan is unthinkable under current
circumstances. The US–Japan alliance is as healthy as ever and
is seen by the large majority of the Japanese public and policy
community as central to Japanese security policy.157
According
to polling, the credibility of the defence commitment is stronger
than it was during the Cold War.158
In 2015, 75% of Japanese
said they trust the US.159
A strong alliance relationship is consistent with a different
kind of nuclear-acquisition scenario for Japan: one followed
in conjunction with the US. Most of the Japanese advocates
for nuclearisation see it as a complement to US deterrence,
not as a unilateral move in opposition to the US.160
Samuels
and Schoff outline three models for how this might work: 1)
purchase or lease of US nuclear weapons with cruise missiles,
with the US maintaining a right of launch refusal; 2) lease of
US Trident missiles with co-development of a submarine platform
and cooperation on warhead design, similar to the UK
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Japan | 109
deterrent model; or 3) deployment of US nuclear weapons on
Japanese territory under US control with release to Japan in the
event of a crisis, similar to the NATO model.161
The first two
models, and arguably the third as well, would put both countries
in violation of the NPT, as well as the Missile Technology
Control Regime. All three models are only possible in the event
of an irreparable breakdown in US–China relations and US
willingness also to allow South Korea some degree of nuclear
acquisition. However, the fact that several responsible Japanese
strategists envision some form of nuclear sharing with the US
means that it is not inconceivable.
Constraints
That Japan has remained a non-nuclear-weapons state
throughout the post-war period, despite having both the capabilities
and the presumptive motivations, points to the strength
of the enduring constraints. The reasons Japan did not seek
nuclear weapons at any time over the past 50 years remain
dispositive today. As every internal study over the years has
found, the social, political, economic and strategic factors all
continue to weigh heavily against nuclearisation. Citing these
reasons, former US State Department Japan expert Kevin
Maher said in 2011: ‘We’ve never had any concern about the
Japanese government building a nuclear weapon.’162
Societal opposition
Seventy years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic attacks,
an aversion to nuclear weapons remains embedded in Japanese
culture and society.163
Right-wing figures, such as former
Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, who advocate developing
nuclear weapons remain on the fringes of the political spectrum.
In spring 2013, after North Korea’s third nuclear test and
a string of provocative verbal threats, a public opinion poll by
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110 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
the conservative Fuji TV found 24% in favour of having nuclear
weapons and 73% against.164
The disparaging term ‘nuclear allergy’ was first used by US
secretary of state John Foster Dulles in 1954 to describe the antinuclear
protests fanned that year by the exposure of a Japanese
fishing crew on the Fukuryu Maru to deadly radiation from a
US thermonuclear test on Bikini Atoll, an event that inspired
the Godzilla film series.165
In the years since, the ‘allergy’ has
become part of Japan’s DNA. Although the internal taboo
against discussing nuclearisation has dissipated this century,
the public reaction remains strongly negative against those
who advocate nuclear weapons. Nuclear latency and hedging
is socially acceptable but calling for exercising this option is
not.
Adding to the moral arguments against nuclear weapons
is the post-Fukushima mood against nuclear energy. In the
words of former leading diplomat Yukio Satoh, ‘the disaster
made the Japanese public, housewives in particular, opposed
to all things nuclear.’166
He called it an exaggeration for the
Atlantic Council to suggest that there is an ongoing debate in
Japan about nuclear weapons,167
which is promoted only by a
small minority. The debate, rather, is about whether to continue
nuclear energy at all.
Societal opposition to nuclear weapons is particularly strong
in the academic and scientific communities, including in the
nuclear technology field, which is both pacifist and leak-prone.
If a hawkish prime minister were to decide nuclear weapons
must be built, former Foreign Ministry official Kaneko believes
that scientists and engineers would refuse to go along and
that some would become whistleblowers. The openness of
Japanese society is the most effective brake on a nuclear-weapons
programme, he contends.168
Hymans calls such pacifist
scientists and other opponents of nuclearisation ‘veto players’,
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Japan | 111
and notes that Japan has them in even greater numbers after
Fukushima.169
This societal transparency, combined with the
highly intrusive IAEA monitoring presence in Japan, would
make it nigh on impossible for Japan to pursue a clandestine
path to nuclear weapons.
Economic and geographic constraints
The economic disincentives for South Korea to go nuclear
apply to Japan as well. Bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements
with Australia, Canada, France, the UK and the US all
have stringent non-proliferation conditions, requiring return
of all imported materials and equipment if the civilian nuclear
programme is misused for military purposes. The leverage of
this conditionality will be reduced if the post-Fukushima antinuclear
mood and stricter safety measures keep most of Japan’s
nuclear power plants from resuming operation anyway. But
unless Japan goes entirely nuclear-free, or finds the magic grail
of a self-perpetuating closed fuel cycle, the threat of a nuclear
supply cut-off is still a significant deterrent.
A decision to violate the NPT would also have an economic
cost in terms of lost trade due to sanctions that would be likely
to be imposed. Japan’s lower dependency on foreign trade
(33% of GDP for Japan, compared to 78% for Korea in 2014170
)
again means that this deterrent is less than in the Korean case,
but it remains a non-trivial factor. In repudiation of the prior
militarist model, Japan’s entire post-war development has
been based on the ‘Yoshida doctrine’ (after the first post-war
prime minister, Shigeru Yoshida), emphasising the primacy of
economic growth and reliance on the US for security. Deviating
from this path and incurring both the economic costs of acquiring
a nuclear deterrent and the various opportunity costs and
indirect costs that this would entail would not happen without
a sharp change to the Japanese psyche.
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112 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
All of the Japanese government-inspired studies about the
feasibility of indigenous nuclear weapons fastened upon the
constraints imposed by geography. Japan’s narrow area and
concentrated population make it vulnerable to a first strike
were it to enter into a nuclear competition with land-rich
adversaries such as China or Russia. It may believe it would
thus need a survivable second-strike capability by developing
nuclear-armed submarines, as both the UK and Israel, states
with similar geographic constraints, have done. In Japan’s
case, developing survivable submarines would take perhaps
ten years. The nation’s existing submarines have no missile
launch capacity and are run by diesel engines, with attendant
problems of noise and limited patrolling times. During the
development phase for nuclear-powered and -armed submarines,
Japan would be vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike. Other
geographic constraints include the lack of an unpopulated
space for nuclear testing and of a location for secure storage
and deployment of nuclear weapons and delivery systems.171
Security considerations
An indigenous nuclear programme would fan an arms race
and thus diminish rather than strengthen Japan’s security. It
would be intensely provocative to China, possibly sparking
a further acceleration in its nuclear and conventional military
build-up. Russia may also respond accordingly. Pursuing
nuclear weapons might also increase the danger of a preemptive
nuclear strike from North Korea. In addition, Japanese
nuclearisation would provoke South Korea to seek its own
nuclear arsenal, adding to regional tension and instability. A
departure from the NPT of the most stalwart non-proliferation
advocate would spell the demise of the treaty and the end of
prospects for a nuclear-weapons-free world. A breakdown of
the NPT would increase the chances of states in other regions
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Japan | 113
also seeking nuclear weapons or at least hedging capabilities,
almost all of which would be detrimental to Japan’s security
and trade interests.
On top of exacerbating security challenges from China,
Russia and the Korean Peninsula, Japanese pursuit of nuclear
weapons could lead to abandonment by the US or worse.
Ishiba, the outspoken advocate of nuclear hedging, cautions
against actual nuclearisation for this reason: ‘if we develop
nuclear weapons, that would be tantamount to saying we don’t
trust the nuclear deterrence of the United States … we thereby
could make enemies out of both the US and China, which is the
scariest scenario.’172
National security scholar and former US Defense
Department senior official Brad Roberts also puts the danger
starkly: ‘Japan’s decision to seek an independent nuclear deterrent
would presumably reflect profound lack of confidence in
U.S. credibility; it is difficult to see how or why the U.S.–Japan
alliance would survive a Japanese decision to acquire nuclear
weapons.’173
Roberts’s view reflects the dominant thinking
among America-based analysts.174
Not everyone agrees, of
course. Security policy analyst Elbridge Colby argues that
circumstances would determine whether the US would give
greater weight to non-proliferation over geostrategic considerations
vis-à-vis rising China in responding to Japan acquiring
nuclear weapons.175
An assessment that Japanese proliferation may be acceptable
risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. In early 2003,
vice president Dick Cheney and Senator John McCain both
commented that North Korea’s nuclear quest might force
Japan to seek a nuclear option of its own. Influential conservative
columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote that the US
should endorse a Japanese nuclear deterrent if China did not
pressure Pyongyang into stopping its nuclear programme.176
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114 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
Three years later, a former speechwriter for president George
W. Bush similarly advocated exploiting the ‘Japan nuclear
card’ vis-à-vis China and North Korea.177
Japanese advocates of
nuclearisation took such comments as an endorsement of their
view. Japanese nuclear expert Katsuhisa Furukawa assesses
that ‘Washington’s tacit or open approval’ would be the most
significant factor in fostering a Japanese decision to develop a
nuclear capability.178
Strategists Kurt Campbell and Tsuyoshi
Sunohara thus argue that, however tempting it is to play the
Japan card, ‘American leaders and influential commentators
both within and outside the government should never signal
to the Japanese, even inadvertently, that they actually favor
Japan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.’179
Assessment
Japan did not seek its own nuclear deterrent after China’s 1964
nuclear test, nor after North Korea’s 2006 test. Each time it had
a better security option via US deterrence. It is thus logical to
predict that any further deterioration in Japan’s security environment
would not spark a nuclear pursuit either, unless Japan
had serious doubts about alliance credibility. Given the Asia
policy focus of successive US administrations and the multiple
forums for deterrence consultations, there is no reason for
Japan today to harbour any such doubts. Should any doubts
arise, Tokyo could be expected again to first employ a hedging
strategy to encourage Washington to recommit.
This hedging strategy should be seen for what it is: a means
of diplomatic leverage to ensure a continued American presence
in East Asia and a way to keep options alive for the
future should circumstances dramatically change. Meanwhile,
although the option is being maintained by means of both
the enrichment and reprocessing programmes, no visible
steps have been taken to enhance the option or to shorten the
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Japan | 115
timeline. One can instead see policy decisions in the opposite
direction, including the discontinuation of the M-V solid-fuel
rocket programme and the return to the US of weapons-grade
fissile material. In the foreseeable future, the only way that
nuclear weapons might appear in Japan would be temporarily
aboard US ships or aircraft in the event that the government
were to amend the Three Non-Nuclear Principles.
Notes
1	 KatsuhisaFurukawa,‘Japan’sPolicy
and Views on Nuclear Weapon:
A Historical Perspective’, Jebat:
Malaysian Journal of History, Politics,
& Strategic Studies, vol. 37, 2010, pp.
1–2. Claims that Japan developed
and tested an atomic bomb in its
Korean colony are without merit.
See Walter E. Grunden, ‘Hungnam
and the Japanese Atomic Bomb:
Recent Historiography of a Postwar
Myth’, Intelligence and National
Security, vol. 13, no. 2, 1998.
2	 Masakatsu Ota, ‘U.S. Weighed
Giving Japan Nuclear Weapons in
1950s’, Japan Times, 23 January 2015.
3	 Richard Samuels and James L.
Schoff, ‘Japan’s Nuclear Hedge:
Beyond “Allergy” and Breakout’,
in Ashley J. Tellis, Abraham M.
Denark and Travis Tanner (eds),
Strategic Asia 2013–14: Asia in the
Second Nuclear Age (Washington DC:
National Bureau of Asian Research,
October 2013), p. 237.
4	 Robert S. Norris, William M.
Arkin and William Burr, ‘Where
They Were’, Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, vol. 55, no. 6, December
1999, pp. 30–1.
5	 US Department of State, ‘Telegram
from the Embassy in Japan to
the Department of State’, in
Foreign Relations of the United
States, 1964–68 (Washington DC:
US Government Printing Office,
2006), available at https://history.
state.gov/historicaldocuments/
frus1964-68v29p2/d37.
6	 Taka Daitoku, ‘The Construction of a
Virtual Nuclear State: Japan’s Realis-
ticApproachtoanEmergingNuclear
Nonproliferation Regime, 1964–70’,
revised version of a paper presented
to the Eidgenössische Technische
Hochschule Zürich Center for
Security Studies workshop ‘Making
of a Nuclear Order: Negotiating the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’,
Switzerland, 1 March 2014.
7	 Furukawa, ‘Japan’s Policy and
Views on Nuclear Weapon’, pp.
9–10.
8	 Yuri Kase, ‘The Costs and Benefits
of Japan’s Nuclearization: An
Insight into the 1968/70 Internal
Report’, Nonproliferation Review,
Summer 2001.
9	 Daitoku, ‘The Construction of a
Virtual Nuclear State’.
10	 Ibid.
11	 Ibid.
12	 Michael J. Green and Katsuhisa
Furukawa, ‘Japan: New Nuclear
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116 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
Realism’, in Muthiah Alagappa
(ed.), The Long Shadow: Nuclear
Weapons and Security in 21st Century
Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2008), Chapter
12, pp. 351–2; Nobumasa Akiyama,
‘The Socio-political Roots of Japan’s
Non-Nuclear Posture’, in Benjamin
Self and Jeffrey Thompson (eds),
Japan’s Nuclear Option: Security,
Politics and Policy in the 21st Century
(Washington DC: Henry L. Stimson
Center, 2003), p. 82.
13	 Daitoku, ‘The Construction of a
Virtual Nuclear State’.
14	 Nobumasa Akiyama, ‘Japan’s
Disarmament Dilemma: Between
the Moral Commitment and the
Security Reality’, in George P. Shultz
and James Goodby (eds), The War
That Must Never Be Fought: Dilemmas
of Nuclear Deterrence (Stanford, CA:
Hoover Institution Press, 2015),
pp. 451–2; Kurt M. Campbell
and Tsuyoshi Sunohara, ‘Japan:
Thinking the Unthinkable’, in Kurt
M. Campbell, Robert J. Einhorn and
Mitchell Reiss (eds), The Nuclear
Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider
Their Nuclear Choices (Washington
DC: Brookings Institution Press,
2004), p. 228.
15	 Furukawa, ‘Japan’s Policy and
Views on Nuclear Weapon’, p. 20.
16	 Green and Furukawa, ‘Japan’, pp.
349, 353.
17	 Shamshad A. Khan, ‘Japan’s
(Un)clear Nuclear Ambition’,
Institute for Defence Studies and
Analysis, 11 July 2012, http://
www.idsa.in/idsacomments/
Japansclearnuclearambition_
sakhan_110712.
18	 ‘Business-as-Usual Alteration of
Nuclear Law Unsettling’, Mainichi
Shimbun, 2 July 2012, available at
http://www.fukushima-is-still-
news.com/article-atomic-energy-
basic-law-part-4-107697948.html.
19	 Llewelyn Hughes, ‘Why Japan Will
Not Go Nuclear (Yet)’, International
Security, vol. 31, no. 4, Spring
2007, p. 83; Mike M. Mochizuki,
‘Japan Tests the Nuclear Taboo’,
Nonproliferation Review, vol. 14, no.
2, July 2007.
20	 Akiyama, ‘The Socio-political Roots
of Japan’s Non-Nuclear Posture’, p.
67.
21	 Jonathan Schell, The Seventh Decade:
The New Shape of Nuclear Danger
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007), p. 145.
22	 Hans Kristensen, ‘Japan Under
the US Nuclear Umbrella’, The
Nautilus Institute, 1999, http://
oldsite.nautilus.org/archives/
library/security/papers/Nuclear-
Umbrella-1.html.
23	 Green and Furukawa, ‘Japan’, p.
350.
24	 Furukawa, ‘Japan’s Policy and
Views on Nuclear Weapon’, p. 24.
25	 Green and Furukawa, ‘Japan’, p. 349.
26	 Peter A. Clausen, Nonproliferation
and the National Interest (New York:
HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 87–9,
cited in Motoya Kitamura, ‘Japan’s
Plutonium Program: A Proliferation
Threat?’, Nonproliferation Review,
Winter 1996.
27	 Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics:
Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the
Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2007), p. 58.
28	 Akiyama, ‘Japan’s Disarmament
Dilemma’, p. 437.
29	 Maria Rost Rublee, ‘The Threshold
States: Japan and Brazil’, Chapter 5
of Tanya Ogilvie-White and David
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Japan | 117
Santoro (eds), Slaying the Nuclear
Dragon: Disarmament Dynamics in
the Twenty-First Century (Athens,
GA: University of Georgia Press,
2012), p. 170.
30	 Akiyama, ‘Japan’s Disarmament
Dilemma’, p. 444.
31	 Author’s discussions with security
experts in Tokyo, November 2014.
32	 Examples drawn from Kenneth J.
Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence
of Japanese Power and Purpose
(Cambridge, MA: The Century
Foundation, 2007), pp. 366–8.
33	 Sang-Moo Hwang, ‘Ilbon Eui
Haekmujang Chujinkwah
Dongbukah Jungsae’, KBS, 1 July
2012, cited in Samuels and Schoff,
‘Japan’s Nuclear Hedge’, p. 256.
34	 Etel Solingen, ‘The Perils of
Prediction: Japan’s Once and Future
Nuclear Status’, in William C. Potter
(ed.), Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation
in the 21st Century: A Comparative
Perspective (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2010), p. 155.
35	 Author interview in Tokyo,
November 2014.
36	 Donald S. Zagoria, ‘NCAFP Factfinding
Mission to Seoul, Taipei,
Beijing and Tokyo 18 October–2
November, 2014’, National Committee
on American Foreign Policy,
https://www.ncafp.org/ncafp/
wp-content/uploads/2014/12/
N C A F P - A s i a - T r i p - R e p o r t _
November-2014.pdf.
37	 Jacques E.C. Hymans, ‘Veto Players,
Nuclear Energy, and Nonproliferation:
Domestic Institutional Barriers
to a Japanese Bomb’, International
Security, vol. 36, no. 2, October 2011,
p. 188. Llewelyn Hughes also argues
that Japan has not implemented
hedging as a ‘coherent national
strategy’. See Hughes, ‘Why Japan
Will Not Go Nuclear (Yet)’, p. 69.
38	 Takuya Kubo, ‘Boueiryoku Seibi no
Kangaekata’,20February1971,http://
www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/
documents/texts/JPSC/19710220.
O1J.html, cited in Hajime Izumi and
Katsuhisa Furukawa, ‘Not Going
Nuclear: Japan’s Response to North
Korea’s Nuclear Test’, Arms Control
Today, June 2007.
39	 Quoted in Daitoku, ‘The Construction
of a Virtual Nuclear State’.
40	 Quoted in Furukawa, ‘Japan’s
Policy and Views on Nuclear
Weapon’, p. 8.
41	 Andrew L. Oros, ‘Godzilla’s Return:
The New Nuclear Politics in an
Insecure Japan’, in Benjamin L. Self
and Jeffrey W. Thompson (eds),
Japan’s Nuclear Option: Security,
Politics, and Policy in the 21st Century
(Washington DC: Henry L. Stimson
Center, 2003), p. 51.
42	 Sam Jameson, ‘Official Says Japan
Will Need Nuclear Arms if N. Korea
Threatens’, Los Angeles Times, 29
July 1993.
43	 David Sanger, ‘In Face-Saving Turn,
Japan Denies Nuclear Know-How’,
New York Times, 22 June 1994.
44	 Morihiro Hosokawa, ‘Are U.S.
Troops in Japan Needed? Reforming
the Alliance’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 77,
no. 4, July–August 1998, p. 5.
45	 Ariel Levite, ‘Never Say Never
Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited’,
International Security, vol. 27, no. 3,
Winter 2002–03, p. 71.
46	 ‘Japanese Official Quits After
Backing Nuclear Armaments’,
Chicago Tribune, 21 October 1999.
47	 ‘Tokyo Politician Warns Beijing
It Can Go Nuclear “Overnight”’,
Agence France-Presse, 8 April 2002.
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118 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
48	 Howard W. French, ‘Koizumi Aide
Hints at Change to No Nuclear
Policy’, New York Times, 4 June 2002,
p. 10.
49	 ‘Koizumi Denies Change in NonNuclear
Policy amid Reports of
Officials Suggesting a Switch’,
Associated Press, 31 May 2002, cited
in Eric Talmadge, ‘Controversy over
Remarks on Japan Nuclear Option’,
Disarmament Diplomacy, no. 65,
July–August 2002, http://www.
acronym.org.uk/dd/dd65/65nr07.
htm.
50	 Campbell and Sunohara, ‘Japan’, p.
230.
51	 Cited in Furukawa, ‘Japan’s Policy
and Views on Nuclear Weapon’, p.
15.
52	 Chester Dawson, ‘In Japan, Provocative
Case for Staying Nuclear’, Wall
Street Journal, 28 October 2011; interview
with Masakatsu Ota, Shinano
Mainichi Shimbun, 25 October 2011,
translated in ‘Nautilus Peace and
Security – 13 November’, NAPSNet
Weekly Report, 12 November
2014, http://nautilus.org/napsnet/
napsnet-weekly/nautilus-peace-
and-security-13-november/.
53	 ‘Musekininna Syusho no Seissaku
Minaoshiron’, Yomiuri Shimbun, 10
August 2011; ‘Tenbo Naki “datsu
genpatsu” to ketsubetsu wo’,
Kyodo, 7 September 2011, cited in
Masakatsu Ota, ‘The Fukushima
Nuclear Crisis and Its Political
and Social Implications’, in Bong
Youngshik and T.J. Pempel (eds),
Japan in Crisis: What Will It Take for
Japan to Rise Again? (Seoul: Asan
Institute for Policy Studies, 2013).
54	 ‘Japan Defense Chief Morimoto
Sees Nuclear Plants as Deterrent,
Favors 25% Option for Energy
Mix’, Kyodo, 12 September 2012,
available at http://www.acronym.
org.uk/news/201209/japan-defense-
chief-morimoto-sees-nuclear-
plants-deterrent-favors-25-option-
energy-mix.
55	 Robert Windrem, ‘Japan Has
Nuclear “Bomb in the Basement”,
and China Isn’t Happy’, NBC,
11 March 2014, http://www.
nbcnews.com/storyline/fukushima-
anniversary/japan-has-nuclearb
o m b - b a s e m e n t - c h i n a - i s n t -
happy-n48976.
56	 Interview, January 2015.
57	 Interview with a journalist in
Tokyo, November 2014.
58	 Some authors claim Japan has developed
electronic triggers and other
parts necessary for nuclear bombs.
The source for these claims is a 1994
article in the Sunday Times, citing a
purported UK Ministry of Defence
report to the Joint Intelligence
Committee (Nick Rufford, ‘Japan to
“Go Nuclear” in Asian Arms Race’,
Sunday Times, 30 January 1994). The
newspaper has a reputation for
sensationalism and does not require
double sourcing for its exposés.
59	 See James M. Acton, ‘Wagging the
Plutonium Dog: Japanese Domestic
Politics and Its International
Security Implications’, Carnegie
Endowment for International
Peace, 29 September 2015, http://
carnegieendowment.org/files/
Plutonium_Dog_final.pdf.
60	 Hughes, ‘Why Japan Will Not Go
Nuclear (Yet)’, pp. 80–1.
61	 Kitamura, ‘Japan’s Plutonium Pro-
gram’.
62	 US Energy Information Administration,
‘Japan: International Energy
Data and Analysis’, 30 January
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Japan | 119
2015, http://www.eia.gov/beta/
international/analysis.cfm?iso=JPN.
63	 The Japan Atomic Energy Commission
established this goal in 1956
in the first Long-Term Program for
the Research, Development, and
Utilization of Nuclear Energy.
64	 Jeffrey W. Thompson and Benjamin
L. Self, ‘Nuclear Energy, Space
Launch Vehicles, and Advanced
Technology: Japan’s Prospects for
Nuclear Breakout’, in Benjamin L.
Self and Jeffrey W. Thompson (eds),
Japan’s Nuclear Option: Security,
Politics, and Policy in the 21st Century,
(Washington DC: Henry L. Stimson
Center, 2003), p. 151.
65	 Government of Japan, ‘Strategic
Energy Plan’, April 2014, p. 54,
http://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/
en/category/others/basic_plan/
pdf/4th_strategic_energy_plan.pdf.
66	 Japan calls the MOX use ‘pluthermal’
(plusamuru), a Japanese combination
of plutonium and thermal
reactors (in contrast to fast-breeder
reactors).
67	 Acton, ‘Wagging the Plutonium
Dog’.
68	 Kitamura, ‘Japan’s Plutonium Pro-
gram’.
69	 Douglas Birch, R. Jeffrey Smith
and Jake Adelstein, ‘Plutonium
Fever Blossoms in Japan’, The
Center for Public Integrity, 19 May
2014, http://www.publicintegrity.
o r g / 2 0 1 4 / 0 3 / 1 2 / 1 4 3 9 4 /
plutonium-fever-blossoms-japan.
70	 Victor Gilinsky, Marvin Miller
and Harmon Hubbard, ‘A Fresh
Examination of the Proliferation
Dangers of Light Water Reactors’,
Nonproliferation Education Center,
22 October 2004, http://npolicy.org/
article.php?aid=172#_ftn_Main_22.
71	 Communications with former US
State Department official Fred
McGoldrick, who was involved in
US–Japan nuclear diplomacy at the
time.
72	 Ibid. A similar policy determination
was made for India in 2010 by
president George W. Bush.
73	 White House, ‘Fact Sheet —
Nonproliferation and Export
Control Policy’, 27 September 1993,
available at http://fas.org/spp/
starwars/offdocs/w930927.htm.
74	 Toshihiro Okuyama, ‘U.S. Alarmed
about Plutonium Stockpile Growing
from Rokkasho Plant’, Asahi
Shimbun, 13 April 2014, http://ajw.
asahi.com/article/behind_news/
politics/AJ201404130029.
75	 ‘Uranium for 20 Nukes Repatriated
from Japan in Special U.S.
Operation’, Kyodo, 27 December
2008.
76	 Interview in Tokyo, November 2014.
77	 Rublee, ‘The Threshold States’, p.
163.
78	 Emma Chanlett-Avery and Mary
Beth Nikitin, ‘Japan’s Nuclear
Future: Policy Debate, Prospects,
and U.S. Interests’, Congressional
Research Service, 19 February
2009, pp. 5–6, available at
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/
RL34487_20080509.pdf.
79	 ‘Japan’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle Futures:
Evaluating the Nonproliferation
ImpactofJapan’sNuclearFuelCycle
Decisions’, summary of a workshop
co-hosted by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies
Proliferation Prevention Program
and Hitotsubashi University, 20
November 2014, http://csis.org/files/
publication/141120_Report_Japan_
Nuclear_Fuel_Cycle_Futures.pdf.
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120 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
80	 The 47.8-tonne figure is the amount
of total plutonium. The amount
of fissionable plutonium (Pu-239
and Pu-241) is approximately
30 tonnes, 6.3 tonnes of which is
stored in Japan. Since 1994, Japan
has voluntarily disclosed data
about its plutonium stockpile as
a confidence-building measure
(but not about its HEU stocks). In
reports to the IAEA in 2012 and
2013, Japan forgot to include 620kg
of plutonium in MOX fuel that was
stored unused at an idle power
plant in Kyushu. Rectification of the
mistake in 2014 generated domestic
controversy, and criticism from
China.
81	 Interview, November 2014.
82	 ‘MOX Imports Have Cost at
Least ¥99.4bn, Much Higher
than Uranium Fuel’, Jiji Press, 22
February 2015.
83	 Douglas Birch, ‘The Projected Cost
of the Government’s Most Expen­sive
NonproliferationEffortRisesAgain’,
Center for Public Integrity, 23 April
2015, http://www.publicintegrity.
org/2015/04/23/17218/projected-
cost-governments-most-expensive-
nonproliferation-effort-rises-again.
84	 Acton, ‘Wagging the Plutonium
Dog’.
85	 Masafumi Takubo and Frank von
Hippel, ‘Ending Reprocessing in
Japan: An Alternative Approach to
Managing Japan’s Spent Nuclear
Fuel and Separated Plutonium’,
International Panel on Fissile
Materials, November 2013, http://
fissilematerials.org/library/rr12.pdf.
86	 ‘Japan’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Futures’.
87	 Author’s interview with Tatsujiro
Suzuki, October 2014.
88	 Fred McGoldrick, ‘IAEA Custody of
Japanese Plutonium Stocks: Strength­
eningConfidenceandTrans­parency’,
Arms Control Today, September 2014.
89	 Interview with Tatsujiro Suzuki,
October 2014. Suzuki was vice
chairman of the Japan Atomic
Energy Commission at the time of
the policy debate.
90	 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of
the People’s Republic of China,
‘Foreign Ministry Spokesperson
Hua Chunying’s Regular Press
Conference on February 17, 2014’,
http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/
xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/
2535_665405/t1129283.shtml.
91	 Interview in Tokyo, January 2015.
92	 ‘SecurityImplicationsoftheNuclear
Fuel Cycle: Report of the Monterey
Eminent Persons Group’, James
Martin Center for Nonproliferation
Studies, October 2014, http://www.
nonproliferation.org/wp-content/
uploads/2014/10/141028_nuclear_
fuel_cycle_security_implications_
lewis.pdf.
93	 US Department of Energy, ‘Additional
Information Concerning
Underground Nuclear Weapon Test
of Reactor-Grade Plutonium’, 1994,
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/
forms.jsp?formurl=document/
press/pc29.html. For a discussion
of whether the 1962 test was really
reactor-grade, see Gregory S. Jones,
‘What Was the Pu-240 Content of
the Plutonium Used in the U.S. 1962
Nuclear Test of Reactor-Grade Plutonium?’,
Nonproliferation Policy
Education Center, 6 May 2013,
http://www.npolicy.org/article.
php?aid=1212&rtid=2.
94	 Twenty years ago, Selig Harrison
reported that the amounts were
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Japan | 121
about 40kg from Joyo and 10kg
from Monju. See Selig S. Harrison,
‘Unclassified Working Papers’,
Appendix 3 in Japan’s Nuclear Future:
The Plutonium Debate and East Asian
Security, Commission to Assess the
Ballistic Missile Threat to the United
States, 15 July 1996, http://www.
fas.org/irp/threat/missile/rumsfeld/
pt2_selig.htm. I obtained updated
figures from knowledgeable sources
in Tokyo in October 2015.
95	 Interview with Tatsujiro Suzuki,
October 2014.
96	 Selig Harrison, ‘North Korea and
the Future of East Asia Nuclear
Stability’, in N.S. Sisodia, V.
Krishnappa and Priyanka Singh
(eds), Proliferation and Emerging
Nuclear Order in the Twenty-First
Century (New Delhi: Academic
Foundation, 2009), pp. 49–50.
97	 Samuels and Schoff, ‘Japan’s
Nuclear Hedge’, p. 241.
98	 Kazuo Takase et al., ‘Successful
Demonstration for Upper Stage
Controlled Re-entry Experiment by
H-IIB Launch Vehicle’, Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries Technical Review,
vol. 48, no. 4, December 2011, http://
www.mhi.co.jp/technology/review/
pdf/e484/e484011.pdf.
99	 Furukawa, ‘Japan’s Policy and
Views on Nuclear Weapon’, p. 20.
100	Self and Thompson, ‘Nuclear
Energy, Space Launch Vehicles,
and Advanced Technology’, p. 173;
James L. Schoff, Realigning Priorities:
the U.S.–Japan Alliance and the Future
of Extended Deterrence (Cambridge,
MA: Institute for Foreign Policy
Analysis, 2009), p. 45.
101	Self and Thompson, ‘Nuclear
Energy, Space Launch Vehicles, and
Advanced Technology’, p. 173.
102	Dawson, ‘In Japan, Provocative
Case for Staying Nuclear’.
103	Schoff, ‘Realigning Priorities’, p. 47.
104	Ibid., pp. 47–9.
105	I am indebted to James Acton for
this observation.
106	Paul Levanthal, quoted in Geoff
Brumfiel, ‘Nuclear Proliferation
Special: We Have the Technology’,
Nature, 25 November 2004, p. 432.
107	Interview with Vladimir Orlov,
January 2015.
108	See Windrem, ‘Japan Has Nuclear
“Bomb in the Basement”, and China
Isn’t Happy’.
109	Jeffrey Lewis, ‘N Minus Six Months’,
Arms Control Wonk, 6 January 2007,
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/
archive/1344/n-minus-six-months.
110	Hideo Tamura, ‘Kaku Danto
Shisaku ni 3nen Ijo’, Sankei Shimbun,
25 December 2006.
111	US Deputy Director of National
Intelligence, ‘National Intelligence
Estimate Number 4–66: The
Likelihood of Further Nuclear
Proliferation’, 20 January 1966,
National Security Archive, http://
w w w . g w u . e d u / ~ n s a r c h i v /
NSAEBB/NSAEBB155/prolif-12.
pdf.
112	US Director of Central Intelligence,
‘National Intelligence Estimate
Number 4–67: Proliferation of
Missile Delivery Systems for
Nuclear Weapons’, National
Security Archive, 26 January 1967,
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/
NSAEBB155/prolif-14b.pdf.
113	‘A Primer on the Future Threat, the
Decades Ahead: 1999–2020’, quoted
in Rowan Scarborough, Rumsfeld’s
War:TheUntoldStoryofAmerica’sAntiTerrorist
Commander (Washington DC:
Regnery, 2004), p. 149.
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122 | Asia’s latent nuclear powers: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
114	See Schoff, ‘Realigning Priorities’, p.
44.
115	Thompson and Self, ‘Nuclear
Energy, Space Launch Vehicles, and
Advanced Technology’, pp. 165–6.
116	Schoff, ‘Realigning Priorities’, p. 44.
117	Ibid., p. 26.
118	Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Fragile
Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan
(New York: Harper and Row, 1972);
John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Why We Will
Soon Miss the Cold War’, in Andrei
G. Bochkarev and Don L. Mansfield
(eds), The United States and the USSR
in a Changing World (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1992); Kenneth N.
Waltz, ‘The Emerging Structure of
International Politics’, International
Security, vol. 18, no. 2, Autumn
1993, pp. 44–79.
119	CIA, ‘Nuclear Weapons Production
in Fourth Countries: Likelihood
and Consequences’, national
intelligence estimate no. 100-6-57,
18 June 1957, National Security
Archive, www.gwu.edu/-nsarchiv/
NSAEBB/NSAEBB155/prolif-2.pdf.
The national intelligence estimate
said Japan would ‘probably seek
to develop weapons production
programs within the next decade’.
120	Poll cited in Solingen, Nuclear
Logics, p. 66.
121	Japan Defense Agency, ‘Concerning
the Problem of the Proliferation of
WeaponsofMassDestruction’,1995,
p.34,http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/
documents/nwgs/1995jdastudy.
pdf. In common Japanese fashion,
the language employed a double
negative to qualify the assertion.
122	See Harrison, ‘North Korea and
the Future of East Asia Nuclear
Stability’, p. 45; Campbell and
Sunohara, ‘Japan’, p. 231.
123	Japanese Ministry of Defense,
‘Defense of Japan 2014’, p. 17,
http://www.mod.go.jp/e/publ/w_
paper/2014.html.
124	Armed with a 1,000kg warhead, the
original Nodong can travel about
900km. Tokyo is probably out of
range, but not Nagoya or some parts
of western Japan. A variant of the
Nodong that was first displayed in
2010 might have a range of 1,600km
if the warhead was reduced to
750kg. See Mark Fitzpatrick (ed.),
North Korean Security Challenges: A
Net Assessment (London: IISS, 2011),
p. 135.
125	Matake Kamiya, ‘A Disillusioned
Japan Confronts North Korea’,
Arms Control Today, May 2003.
126	Izumi and Furukawa, ‘Not Going
Nuclear’.
127	Asahi public opinion poll, October
2006, http://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/hst/
poll/200610/.
128	Izumi and Furukawa, ‘Not Going
Nuclear’.
129	Christopher W. Hughes, ‘North
Korea’s Nuclear Weapons: Implications
for the Nuclear Ambitions of
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan’,
Asia Policy, no. 3, January 2007, p. 87.
130	Izumi and Furukawa, ‘Not Going
Nuclear’.
131	See Robert Zarate, ‘America’s
Allies and Nuclear Arms: Assessing
the Geopolitics of Nonproliferation
in Asia’, Foreign Policy
Initiative, 6 May 2014, http://
www.foreignpolicyi.org/content/
america%E2%80%99s-allies-and-
nuclear-arms-assessing-geopolitics-
nonproliferation-asia#sthash.
CpJqRJwa.dpuf.
132	Interview in Tokyo, November
2014.
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Japan | 123
133	Nobumasa Akiyama, presentation
at IISS workshop in Seoul, 27
October 2014.
134	Interviews in Tokyo, November 2014.
135	Interview in Washington, March
2015.
136	 ‘Why Is China Modernizing its
Nuclear Arsenal?’, panel discussion
at the 2015 Carnegie Nuclear Policy
Conference, 24 March 2015, http://
carnegieendowment.org/2015/03/24/
why-is-china-modernizing/hz37.
137	Brad Roberts, ‘Extended Deterrence
and Strategic Stability in Northeast
Asia’, National Institute of Defense
Studies, 9 August 2013, pp. 30–1,
http://www.nids.go.jp/english/
publication/visiting/pdf/01.pdf.
138	Interview with a US official,
Washington, March 2015.
139	Interviews in Tokyo, January 2015.
140	Solingen, Nuclear Logics, p. 59.
141	US exports to China in 2014 totalled
US$124bn, compared to US$67bn to
Japan; imports from China totalled
US$467bn, compared to US$134
from Japan, according to US Census
Bureau figures available at https://
www.census.gov/foreign-trade/
balance/c5880.html.
142	Samuels and Schoff, ‘Japan’s
Nuclear Hedge’, p. 245, citing Sankei
Shimbun, 22 February 2013.
143	Interview with Michael Green,
October 2014. Green, who covered
Asia policy for Republican
presidential candidate John
McCain’s campaign, was one of
those contacted.
144	Letter from Katsuya Okada to
Hillary Clinton, 24 December
2009, unofficial translation, http://
icnndngojapan.files.wordpress.
com/2010/01/20091224_okada_
letter_en.pdf.
145	Roberts, ‘Extended Deterrence and
Strategic Stability in Northeast
Asia’, p. 25.
146	Michito Tsuruoka, ‘Why the NATO
Nuclear Debate Is Relevant to
Japan and Vice Versa’, German
Marshall Fund of the United States,
8 October 2010, http://www.gmfus.
org/publications/why-nato-nuclear-
debate-relevant-japan-and-vice-
versa.
147	Samuels and Schoff, ‘Japan’s
Nuclear Hedge’, p. 246.
148	Discussion with Ken Jimbo,
November 2014.
149	 Japanese Ministry of Defense,
‘National Defense Program Guidelines
for FY 2014 and Beyond’,
17 December 2013, http://www.
mod.go.jp/j/approach/agenda/
guideline/2014/pdf/20131217_e2.pdf.
150	Ministry of Foreign Affairs of
Japan, ‘The Guidelines for U.S.–
Japan Defense Cooperation’, 27
April 2015, http://www.mofa.
go.jp/region/n-america/us/security/
guideline2.html.
151	Discussion with Ken Jimbo, November
2014.
152	Justin McCurry and Tania Branigan,
‘Obama Says US Will Defend Japan
in Island Dispute with China’,
Guardian, 24 April 2014.
153	Bruno Tertrais, ‘Drawing Red
Lines Right’, Washington Quarterly,
Autumn 2014.
154	ShinzoAbe’s remarks at Statesmen’s
ForumattheCenterforStrategicand
International Studies, Washington
DC, 22 February 2013, http://csis.
org/files/attachments/132202_PM_
Abe_TS.pdf.
155	Robert A. Manning, ‘The Future of
US Extended Deterrence in Asia
to 2025’, Atlantic Council, October
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2014, http://www.atlanticcouncil.
org/publications/reports/the-
future-of-us-extended-deterrencein-asia-to-2025.
Aaron L. Friedberg,
Beyond Air–Sea Battle: The Debate
Over US Military Strategy in Asia
(Abingdon: Routledge for the IISS,
2014).
156	Furukawa, ‘Japan’s Policy and
Views on Nuclear Weapon’, p. 23;
interview with US official, March
2015.
157	Zagoria, ‘NCAFP Fact-finding
Mission to Seoul, Taipei, Beijing and
Tokyo 18 October – 2 November,
2014’.
158	Green and Furukawa, ‘Japan’, pp.
358–9.
159	Pew Research Center, ‘Americans,
Japanese: Mutual Respect 70 Years
after the End of WWII’, 7 April
2015, http://www.pewglobal.
org/2015/04/07/americans-japanese-
mutual-respect-70-years-after-the-
end-of-wwii/.
160	Mochizuki, ‘Japan Tests the Nuclear
Taboo’, p. 314; Green and Furukawa,
‘Japan’, p. 348.
161	Samuels and Schoff, ‘Japan’s
Nuclear Hedge’, p. 257. A related
model would involve relaxing
the Three Non-Nuclear Principles
overtly to allow the transit of US
nuclear-armed ships and aircraft.
162	Dawson, ‘In Japan, Provocative
Case for Staying Nuclear’.
163	Kamiya, ‘A Disillusioned Japan
Confronts North Korea’, p. 67.
164	‘Seron chosa: Abe Naikako Shiji …
71.4% Fushiji 21.8%: Kitachosen
ni Taishite Atsuryoku Yori Taiwa
wo Juushi 57.6%’, Fuji TV, 21
April 2013, http://jin115.com/
archives/51944442.html.
165	Solingen, Nuclear Logics, p. 66;
Samuels and Schoff, ‘Japan’s
Nuclear Hedge’, p. 251.
166	Interview with Yukio Satoh,
November 2014.
167	Manning, ‘The Future of US
Extended Deterrence in Asia to
2025’, p. 4.	
168	Kumao Kaneko, ‘Japan Needs No
Umbrella’, Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, vol. 52, no. 2, March–
April 1996.
169	Hymans, ‘Veto Players, Nuclear
Energy, and Nonproliferation’, p. 180.
170	World Bank, ‘Merchandise Trade
(% of GDP)’, http://data.worldbank.
org/indicator/TG.VAL.TOTL.
GD.ZS.
171	Izumi and Furukawa, ‘Not Going
Nuclear’.
172	Reiji Yoshida, ‘National Security
Debate Mushrooming Since Oct 9’,
Japan Times, 25 November 2006.
173	Brad Roberts, ‘Extended Deterrence
and Strategic Stability in Northeast
Asia’.
174	See David Santoro, ‘Will America’s
Asian Allies Go Nuclear?’, National
Interest, 30 January 2014, http://
nationalinterest.org/commentary/
will-americas-asian-allies-gonuclear-9794;
and Zarate, ‘America’s
Allies and Nuclear Arms’.
175	Elbridge Colby, ‘Choose Geopolitics
Over Nonproliferation’, National
Interest, 28 February 2014, http://
nationalinterest.org/commentary/
c h o o s e - g e o p o l i t i c s - o v e r -
nonproliferation-9969?page=show.
176	Quoted in Mitsuru Kurosawa, ‘East
Asian Regional Security and Arguments
for a Nuclear Japan’, paper
presented at the Hiroshima Peace
Institute workshop ‘Prospects for
East Asian Nuclear Disarmament’,
Hiroshima, 11–12 March 2004.
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177	David Frum, ‘Mutually Assured
Disruption’, New York Times, 20
October 2006.
178	Katsuhisa Furukawa, ‘Japan’s
Nuclear Option’, in James J. Wirtz and
Peter R. Lavoy (eds), Over the Horizon
Proliferation Threats (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2012), p. 28.
179	Campbell and Sunohara, ‘Japan’, p.
246.
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