TOKYO LETTER:IN A country that suffered twin atomic bombings, killing at least 250,000 people and counting, nuclear weapons has been a totemic issue since 1945, writes DAVID McNEILL
Even as the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilding their shattered cities, the nation began a debate on the burgeoning atomic age, culminating in the so-called three non-nuclear principles.
Japan would never produce, possess or allow the entry of nuclear weapons into the country.
Like the new constitution that renounced the right to wage war, the no-nukes pledge has been seen as part of Tokyo’s long post-war struggle to repair relations with its Asian neighbours – an apology, in effect.
Both were considered permanent and non-negotiable except – as Japanese citizens are again discovering – they weren’t. Almost as soon as the ink was dry on the 1947 constitution, Japan’s new military ally Washington began pressing for rearmament in the face of Chinese and Russian communism.
And as a new government investigation looks certain to prove, the no-nuke rule was undermined by a backroom deal struck between Washington and Tokyo, allowing nuclear-armed US ships and aircraft to travel anywhere through or over Japanese territory.
After decades of rumours, a senior foreign office bureaucrat confirmed in the summer that Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) played the nuclear poker game with one hand behind its back. The revelation wasn’t new: declassified US documents had given the game away years ago.
The deal, agreed during the famously fraught negotiations to renew the Japan-US security treaty in 1960, depended on a “misinterpretation”.
Tokyo believed that it would receive prior consultation before any dockings or flyovers; Washington had no such understanding.
When the LDP discovered the difference, it kept quiet “instead of publicly acknowledging a change in position”, says the Asahi newspaper.
LDP politicians repeatedly denied the deal, even after the Japanese parliament officially adopted the no-nuke principles in 1971. Today, the official line is still that the pact doesn’t exist.
Mendacity clung to the LDP for much of its half-century reign – one reason why they were booted out of office in August. But many expect higher standards from the newly elected Democrats (DPJ).
New foreign minister Katsuya Okada has ordered his ministry to investigate the pact in the hope that it will, as he says, “restore confidence in Japan’s diplomacy”.
But what happens if, as expected, investigators find that the state has for decades been thumbing its nose at one of its most sacred principles? Will the DPJ continue to overlook the transgressions in the interests of protecting the alliance, or do what it said it would: ban atomic weapons from Japanese soil?
The answer, for now, is a resounding yes and no. Prime minister Yukio Hatoyama struck an ambiguous note during the election campaign when he said the US pact was “based on necessity”.
He reportedly rejected a pre-election request by stanchly pacifist coalition partner the Social Democrats to put the no-nuke principles into law.
Some commentators now wonder if this is a sign of things to come. The DPJ already appears to be watering down a promise to confront Washington over its huge military footprint on the southern prefecture of Okinawa, reluctant host to thousands of marines and most US bases in Japan.
Defence minister Toshimi Kitazawa said this week that resolving the biggest single issue in Okinawa, the relocation of the huge Futenma air station,would be “very difficult” – Japanese diplomatic language for impossible.
Okinawans will just have to put up with the noise, pollution and crime from Futenma, which squats over 25 per cent of densely populated Ginowan city – imagine a military base occupying an area from O’Connell Street to St. Stephen’s Green.
At the heart of both the base and secret pact issues is a fundamental conundrum. Since the US marines waded ashore in Okinawa 64 years ago, Japan has been bound up with American interests. Irrespective of the no-nuke principles, it continues to shelter beneath the US nuclear umbrella, and behind an American-built defence wall erected during a Cold War that ended two decades ago.
As Mr Hatoyama acknowledges, China and Russia have since changed beyond all recognition. But the heavy US military presence remains in Asia with loyal ally Japan at its side. Washington sometimes calls in the chips on this arrangement, as it did during the Iraq war when it asked Japan to send a contingent of its troops – the first time they were in a war zone since the second World War.
The DPJ pledged before the election to end Tokyo’s long subservience to US interests. The coming months will tell if that pledge has any weight.