This writer contends that the nuclear destruction caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II created a victim consciousness in Japan, which is manifested in their effort to limit nuclear proliferation around the world.  This victim mentality would begin to emerge with Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s radio address to his people announcing Japan’s capitulation, ending World War II.  Japan’s unique role as the only country to experience the devastation of nuclear weapons provided a basis for its authority on human suffering in war.  Historical representations of the Pacific War conveniently disregarded Japan’s war atrocities in order to show the Japanese people as helpless victims dominated by forces outside of their control. 

After United States military occupation forces eased restrictions of Japanese communications regarding the atomic bombs, the Japanese people conveyed their views on peace and nuclear weapons in books, films, and artwork.  Personal narratives from survivors of the atomic bombs came to be known as “victim” literature.  Japanese directors used the medium of film to comment on nuclear destruction.  Atomic bomb artwork overwhelming used scenes from hell to portray the Japanese atomic bomb experience.

Beginning in 1954, the Japanese peace movement worked toward the goal of slowing nuclear proliferation in the world.  Japan’s conservative government aligned itself with the peace movement.  Using its economic resources as leverage, Japan has worked to persuade other countries to cooperate with existing nonproliferation treaties in recent years.

 

Historiography

Gordon Andrew’s book, Postwar Japan as History, investigates conditions in post-World War II Japan that blocked opportunities for Japanese political and social change.  He contends conservative forces, such as the Liberal Democratic Party and big business, gained pervasive power, which resulted in social and political problems.  John W. Dower asserts, in his book Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays, the foundation of Japan’s leading place in the world’s economy is a result of rapid military industrialization during the 1930’s.  His theory is in opposition to the prevailing assumption among historians that the United States’ss post-World War II occupation is responsible for Japan’s economic viability.  He explores the links between Japanese politics, economics, and culture from pre and post-World War II to modern days.  Dower focuses on the individuality of Japan’s society, and examines how Japanese racism could pose possible problems to their relations to the United States and the world at large.  

Tsuneo Akaha and Frank Langdon, in their book Japan in the Posthegemonic World, examine the challenges facing Japan’s emerging role in the new international order.  Japan is a strong economic force, but lacks military strength.  These factors influence Japan’s international relations.  The international system’s structure is not well defined; therefore, Japan’s place in it is not clear.  The authors conclude that Japan should focus on its economic strength, while involving itself in East Asian security issues with the military backing of the United States.  Marius B. Jansen and Edwin O. Reischauer’s book The Japanese Today: Change and Continuity, analyze modern-day Japan and events that have shaped the country’s development.  They argue the end of the Cold War and worldwide recession created an environment where nations had to reevaluate politics and policies.  In this new setting, they contend Japan has changed greatly.   

Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, edited by John Whittier Treat, contends that Japanese popular culture symbols have their foundations in consumerism.  Mark Schilling explores Japan’s popular culture from 1945 to the present, in his book The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture.  He provides in-depth information and analysis of how various popular culture genres have affected Japan’s culture.  Schilling investigates historical references and connections that show how Japan’s popular heritage has developed.  Stuart Galbraith IV, in his book The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, examines Akira Kurosawa’s and Toshiro Mifune’s contributions to Japan’s film legacy.  He also shows the differences between post-World War II United States and Japanese culture, as seen through cinema.

In his book Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, John W. Dower explores Japan in the years following the end of World War II.  He contends that United States defeat and military occupation of Japan profoundly influenced the development of Japanese society.  He focuses on United States’ss policy that affected Japan.  Dower shows that the Japanese changed their society to coincide with a new open and democratic system.  William J. Long, in his article “Nonproliferation as a Goal as a Goal of Japanese Foreign Assistance,” contends that Japanese foreign aid is either a response to pressure from other countries, or motivated by Japan’s desire to expand investment and export markets for Japanese companies.  He investigates Japanese Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki’s guidelines for distributing official assistance.  These guidelines, begun in 1990, have a clear objective of atomic weapon nonproliferation.  Japanese constitutional restrictions leave few other mechanisms for pursuing national security interests.  Long argues that these new guidelines indicate a new role for Japan as an international security force. 

In his book Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan, Kerr contends Japanese ideology and bureaucracy are responsible for the decline of modern Japan.  He investigates the failure of Japanese banks, pollution of Japan’s environment, the destruction of Japanese monuments, and other areas of Japan’s crisis.  Kerr asserts that there is popular discontent, but not popular protest.  He blames the bureaucratically controlled education system that stresses obedience.  He concludes that a solution to the decline is not easy, or perhaps even possible. 

John Nathan, in his book Japan Unbound: A Volatile Nation’s Quest for Pride and Purpose, contends Japan’s recent economic problems are revealing the country’s long-standing struggle to define its national identity.  The large drop in the Tokyo Stock Exchange in September 1990 marked the beginning of Japan’s longest recession since World War II.  Nathan asserts that Japanese traditionalism began to deteriorate with the drop in the stock market.  He maintains that Japan is now attempting to reconnect with its past and with its ties to Asia, after more than half a century of United States’ss influence.  Nathan argues some of the new nationalism is anti-United States, and fanatical in its nature by revising history texts to glorify Japan’s past.

In her article “The Repatriation of Atomic Bomb Victim Parts to Japan: Natural Objects and Diplomacy,” investigates the repatriation of Japanese atomic bomb victim remains from the United States to Japan between 1967 and 1973.  She considers the remains’ status as diplomatic objects used by both the United States and Japan to negotiate their post-World War II political relations.

 

Japanese and United States Wartime Atomic Bomb Research

Allied intelligence dismissed the possibility of an atomic threat from Japan during World War II.  In fact, Japan was conducting wartime atomic bomb research.  Japan’s activities in this field can be divided into four overlapping stages: 1) preliminary inquires by the Japanese military from 1940 to 1942; 2) from July 1942 to March 1943 a committee of scientist investigates the achievability of producing an atomic weapon; 3) the “NI Project” conducted in Tokyo from late 1942 to April 1945; 4) the “F Project” located Kyoto and supported by the navy possibly as early as 1943, but hardly begun when Japan surrendered.[1]  There is an identifiable initiative originating from Japan’s military, but Japan’s leading scientists involved in the development were ambivalent, therefore there was no individual person responsible for directing the project.

Young Japanese scientists’ involvement with the project kept them away from frontline fighting.  Older scientists participated in collaboration with the younger students.  Those from the scientific community joining Japan’s effort to create an atomic bomb were brought together by a sense of human affection and a desire to save the future of physics in Japan.  Japan’s wartime research indicates that they did not believe it was possible for them or the United States to produce a nuclear weapon on the immediate future.  In October 1944, Nagaoka Hantarō, dean of physics the community and president of Teikoku Gakushiin (The Imperial Academy), called for Japan to abandon nuclear research and commit existing resources toward feasible weapons systems.[2]  While there is no doubt Japan would have used atomic bombs on the Allied forces, economic, technological, and material barriers prevented Japan from approaching anything remotely comparable to United States, British, or German nuclear weapon development efforts.        

The original body of research that is the foundation of atomic bomb science was not developed with the intention to produce a weapon.  Early physicists conducted experiments and proposed theories to satisfy their curiosities regarding the workings of the physical world.  Nuclear scientists during the early twentieth century, such as J. J. Thomson, Wilhelm Roentgen, Henri Becquerel, and the Curies, identified the existence and properties of electron radioactivity.  In 1909, Ernest Rutherford concluded that the mass of an atom lies in its center, with electrons and protons outside the nucleus.  He also discovered that as an atom decays it transubstantiates.  Neils Bohr refined Rutherford’s atomic model in two very important ways.  One, he proposed that the electrons exist in shells of energy, and two, that the nucleus is teardrop shaped.[3]

In 1930, James Chadwick demonstrated the existence of neutrons in an atom’s nucleus.  Frederic Joliot and his wife Irene Joliot Curie discovered that they could manufacture radioactive material when they created an artificial nitrogen radioisotope.  Their discovery opened the door for the fission and fusion of atoms.  Lise Meitner, working with Otto Hahn, theorized that sometimes the nucleus of a uranium atom vacillates under bombardment by neutrons into a dumbbell shape and the repulsive force of the protons in each bulb causes the link to break, producing nuclear fission. 

The release of energy and the ejection of neutrons are results of splitting an atom.  Enrico Fermi realized that an unstable material bombarded with heavy, radioactive elements, like uranium, would result in a chain reaction, producing massive amounts of energy.  Leo Szilard, and associate of Fermi, recognized the possibility that a super-weapon could be fueled by such a chain reaction.  Szilard prompted Albert Einstein, in the summer of 1939, to write a letter to United States President Roosevelt urging him to start atomic bomb research, fearing that Nazi Germany may already be working toward nuclear weapons.

The Manhattan Project, the name for United States’s atomic bomb initiative in World War II, was under the command of General Leslie Groves.  Scientists conducted experiments for the project in four locations.  Researchers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, worked to produce a sufficient quantity of enriched uranium (U235) to fuel an atomic bomb.  Dr. Harold C. Urey led a team that devised a gaseous diffusion technique to extract U235 from U238.  Ernest O. Lawrence developed a magnetic separation method that projected at high velocity an electrically-charged Uranium Tetrachloride mixture in a magnetic field.  Lawrence’s process was costly and only produced a few grains of U235.  Therefore, scientists chose the gaseous diffusion method for U235 production.[4]

In February 1941, chemist Glen Seaborg not only discovered Plutonium, but also found that it was fissionable, which means it can be used to fuel an atomic bomb.  Scientists at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, led by physicist Arthur Holly Compton, conducted supporting research to Seaborg’s efforts.  The Chicago scientists worked to develop a method to separate plutonium from irradiated uranium, and to demonstrate the possibility of controlled chain reactions, thus creating nuclear reactors.  They discovered that cooking U238 in a nuclear reactor would produce Plutonium.  On December 2, 1942, Fermi sustained the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.  The Plutonium Plant was then built at Hanford, Washington to manufacture Plutonium.

Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer headed the Weapons Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  His goal was to complete the design of atomic bombs.  The U235 bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, would use a powder charge to propel a mass of Uranium into two masses of Uranium at the opposite end of a barrel, producing a critical mass.  The simple design of this bomb practically assured its success, and therefore was not tested before its use.  The Plutonium 239 bomb, dubbed “Fat Man”, ignited a powder charge and a series of mirrors directed the energy inward.  The compression of Plutonium into a smaller and smaller area set off a chain reaction.  The complex design of the Plutonium 239 bomb required it be tested before use in combat.  On July 16, 1945, at a remote desert location named Trinity Site, the Los Alamos scientists detonated the world’s first atomic bomb.  “Fat Man” worked.

The Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 bomber, dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan, at 8:15 A. M. August 6, 1945.  A Plutonium 239 bomb fell on Nagasaki, Japan, at 11:02 A. M. August 9, 1945.

 

 

 

 

Japanese Expressions of Victim Mentality

At the time of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese viewed the new bombs as merely weapons of war, despite the massive destruction and casualties caused by them.  Larger numbers of people died during the Allied fire bombings of Tokyo earlier in 1945.  The devastation of the two cities was simply another tragedy Japan suffered in the process of losing World War II.  Among many Japanese, moral questioning and soul-searching regarding the use of the weapons did not occur until later.[5]

In a radio broadcast on August 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s capitulation, ending World War II.  He never spoke of surrender or defeat, he said that the war “did not turn in Japan’s favor, and trends of the world were not advantageous to us.”  He presented Japan’s decision to relent as a magnanimous act to save humanity from annihilation.  He said, “To continue the war further could lead in the end not only to the extermination of our race, but also to the destruction of all human civilization.”  Hirohito’s benevolent sentiment would set the stage for Japan’s emerging identity as a victim.  He embodied the nation’s suffering and became the ultimate victim by transforming the sacrifices of the Japanese people into his own agony.  His often-quoted request that his people “endure the unendurable” symbolized the lack of control over the situation in which the Japanese found themselves.  Hirohito saw Japan’s actions as opening “the way for a great peace for thousands of generations to come.”[6]

Japan is the only country to have nuclear weapons used against it.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent Japan’s unique suffering in World War II.  Their exclusive experience with nuclear destruction gives the Japanese a sense of having encountered something no other group could hope to understand, and pervades their struggle to come to terms with the war’s meaning.  This unique place in history supports their sense of powerlessness by making Japan a victim in defeat.[7]

Historical representation of World War II remains largely unrevised, clearly defining its villains and victims.  From early postwar years, Japan and United States’s official accounts of the Pacific War recognize the Japanese as victims of a military controlled government involving Japan in a war that brought horrible suffering.  However, often forgotten are the victims of Japanese aggression in the Greater East Asian War.  Japan’s violence towards Manchuria began in 1931, and intensified into war from 1937 to 1945.  The United States military occupation of Japan after World War II decreed a change in name from the Greater East Asia War to the Pacific War, and mainly focused on events from the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  These bookends conveniently disregarded Japanese wartime atrocities, such as the Rape of Nanking, in order to legitimize Japan’s place as a victim of nuclear war in its postwar ambition of promoting peace.[8]  The atomic bombs emblemized the cruelty of war and the threat of possible nuclear devastation in future conflicts.  This symbolism would provide a basis for an emerging anti-military nationalism in the Japanese consciousness.

Eventually, the Japanese conveyed their views on peace and atomic weapons in books, films, and artwork.  These creative expressions did not gain widespread momentum until 1948, three years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In Japan, the United States military occupation suppressed anything concerning atomic weapons.  A prevailing self-censorship amongst the Japanese added to the United States’s restrictions on creative expression.[9]  Under these conditions, those who lived through Hiroshima and Nagasaki could neither console each other, nor enlighten the rest of the world about the reality of nuclear war at the human level. 

“The residents of the only country to experience atomic warfare thus

spent the early years of the nuclear age more ignorant of the effects

of the bombs, and less free to publicly discuss and debate their implications, than people in other nations.”[10]

Conventional histories of the Pacific War strove to create a homogenous version of Japan’s past, and in doing so ignored members of society on the margins, such as atomic bomb victims.  Therefore, it fell to survivors of the nuclear devastation to tell their own stories.  This “victim” literature, containing memories of the bombs, is often anti-militaristic in nature with recurring themes of peace, repentance, and atonement.[11]  At the time writings on Japanese atomic bomb experiences finally emerged, Japanese individuals were being tried for war crimes against peace and humanity.  These war trials supported Japan’s growing sense of victimization by modern war.

Kono Ko o Nokoshite (Leaving These Children) is one of the first books about Japanese suffering caused by nuclear weapons that the occupation authority allowed to be printed.  Written by Nagai Takashi and released in 1948, the book focused on Takashi’s ruminations about what would happen to his young children when he died.  The book addressed potential redemption in the face of nuclear devastation, and became a bestseller.  One year later, Nagai published Nagasaki no Kane (The Bells of Nagasaki), but only after a prolonged struggle with the Supreme Command for the Allied Powers censors.  The book also became a bestseller, and in 1950 was made into a movie.  Koseki Yūji, Japan’s famous composer of sentimental war songs, wrote the theme music for the movie.[12]

            A Christian, Nagai was a medical doctor specializing in radiology.  His work exposed him to radiation poisoning before the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, but his wife died in the nuclear attack.  Nagai wrote about the atomic age from his distinctive position as a Christian, scientist, and victim.  He viewed the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a warning to the world by a Christian god.  Nagasaki’s history as a Christian city supported his sense of divine intervention.  He equated the city to a blameless victim sacrificed “for the sins of all nations during World War II.”[13]  More radical Japanese did not agree with Nagai’s pious fatalism, but recognized his influential contribution to the growing Japanese pacifist sentiment.[14]  Nagai devoted his final years to understanding the enormous consequences of nuclear weapons, and he became known as the “saint of Nagasaki.”  The Catholic Pope, Helen Keller, and Emperor Hirohito visited him on his deathbed.  In 1943, Nagai died at the age of 51 from radiation poisoning.      

            Gojira (Godzilla) is the first Japanese film recognized as a protest against nuclear destruction.  Released in 1954, Inoshiro Honda directed the film with Eiji Tsuburaya providing the special effects.  Toho Studios, one of Japan’s largest film companies, produced the movie.  Gojira’s name is derived from the Japanese words gorira (gorilla) and kujira (whale).  Gojira is a prehistoric-like monster created through United States’s hydrogen bomb testing in the Bikini Atoll.  The movie depicts a monster brought forth by United States’s science that devastates Tokyo until destroyed by “Japanese science, personified by the humane Japanese scientist whose suicide helps destroy Godzilla, which ultimately saves the world.”[15]  The film portrays Japan as victims of United States’s nuclear experiments, but their sacrifice rescues humanity from further destruction.

            The creators of Gojira did not originally intend to continue the monster’s escapades.  Honda “had no plans for a sequel and naively hoped that the end of Godzilla was going to coincide with the end of nuclear testing.”[16]  However, Gojira appeared in more than 20 films by the late 1990s.  The first film was not the only movie in the series to portray the United States as an antagonistic force.  Released in 1962, Gojira tai King Kong (Godzilla vs. King Kong), the cinematographer Arikawa Sadamasu recounts that “director Ishiro Honda saw King Kong as a symbol of America, Godzilla as a symbol of Japan, and the fighting between the two monsters a representation of the conflict between the two countries.”[17]  Released in 1991, Gojira tai Kingu Gidora (Godzilla vs. King Ghidora) is set in 1944, and Gojira fights on the side of Japan in their battles against the United States during World War II.  Caucasians from the future capture Gojira and use a three-headed dragon to destroy contemporary Japan, to force the Japanese to buy foreign computers.  Again, the films portray Japan as victims of outside aggressors.

By 1964’s Sandai Kaiju Chikyu no Saidai Kessen (Ghidorah – The Three-Headed Monster), Gojira was no longer a horrifying force of devastation, but a savior of mankind from atomic destruction.  Kempachiro Satsuma is the actor who has played Gojira since 1984.  He says, “After a rampage, Godzilla always returns to the sea, I try to express with my back the silent message that Godzilla will always come back and fight as long as people keep making nuclear weapons.”[18]  Throughout the series, the underlying message remains that the Japanese are victims of destructive forces they cannot control, but they will rebuild what is destroyed.     

            Akira Kurosawa is arguably the most famous Japanese movie director.  His film Ikimono no Kiroku (I Live in Fear) centers on a 70-year-old man obsessed with the fear of nuclear holocaust.  Released in 1955, Akira addresses what he views as humanity’s apathy toward the looming threat of atomic destruction.  Akira’s Hachigatsu no Rapusodi (Rhapsody in August) debuted in 1991.  He based the movie on Kiyoko Murata’s book Nabe no Naka (In the Stew).  The main character, Kane, is a grandmother whose husband died in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.  The film is set in contemporary Japan.  Kane’s “Americanized” grandchildren come to an understanding of the devastation caused by nuclear weapons when they visit her.  However, Kane does not hold the United States responsible for her husband’s death.  “The war was to blame”[19]; the survivors of the bombs are victims of a war they could not control.  When the grandchildren visit the rebuilt Nagasaki of modern buildings, Akir suggests the city has quickly forgotten its tragic history.[20]  He hopes humanity will learn from the “tragedy called nuclear bombs.  It’s been 45 years since the end of the war but radioactivity is still killing people.”[21]

            Survivors of the atomic bombs describe the experience as analogous to being in hell.  To them, the devastation caused by nuclear weapons was a physical manifestation of a Buddhist hell on earth.  Genshin, a 10^th Century Buddhist monk, described in vivid detail the unbearable tortures of hell.  Buddhist artwork showed in raw horrific images the hell’s fiery inferno with monsters and the anguish of naked bodies.[22]  The atomic bombs created a raging firestorm and the tremendously forceful shockwave stripped most of the clothes off people.  Hideously deformed bodies in excruciating pain filled the streets.  Japanese iconography and folklore depict ghosts as shuffling forward with “heads bowed, shoulders slouched and arms half-extended in front, wrists loose and hands flopping down.”[23]  Instinctively covering their eyes because of the extremely bright flash, many suffered severe burns on their arms and hands.  Holding their hands out in the manner of the ghosts slightly lessened the horrible pain.  People silently filed out of the cities in this posture, often described as “processions of ghosts.”  Black fallout dropped from the sky hours after the blasts.  Days later, those who survived the explosion lost their hair and began to vomit blood from radiation poisoning.[24]

            Amateur and professional artwork of atomic bomb survivors overwhelmingly depicts scenes from hell as metaphors for nuclear war.  The image of fire is pervasive, the unforgettable fires of the bombs and the cremation of the dead.  The artists personalize the loss and suffering caused by atomic destruction for humanity, illustrations that serve as a warning and memorial.  These works of art strive to represent the brutalization of the Japanese in hopes of preventing others from becoming such victims. 

            Nakazawa Keiji is the author of the famous children’s book Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen).  The book is a cartoon story of a boy who lost his father, sister, and brother in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  Nakazawa was a seven-year-old in Hiroshima at the time of the nuclear attack, and he lost members of his immediate family.  Published in the 1970s, the majority of the book depicts Gen’s struggle to rebuild his life and make sense of the horrors he survived.  Nakazawa chose the name of Gen for his character because it means “root” or “source”.  He hopes Gen will:

become “a root or source of strength” for generations who could

tread Hiroshima’s charred earth barefoot and find the strength to

say “no” to war and nuclear weapons.[25]

            Husband and wife Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi went to Hiroshima after the nuclear attack in search of relatives.  Between 1950 and 1973, they produced fifteen large (25 x 6 feet) art panels representing different characteristics of atomic war and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima.  Illustrating Japanese nationalistic victim consciousness, the panels put the atomic bombs in a broader context of 20^th Century destructiveness, including atrocities perpetrated by Japan.  Produced in 1951, the panel titled “Rainbow” shows shackled United State military POWs among Hiroshima victims.  A later panel, created in 1971, depicts the torture and slaughter of these POWs by frenzied Japanese citizens.  The panel “Crows”, from 1972, portrays the abuse of Korean Hiroshima bomb survivors by fellow Japanese sufferers.[26]  The Marukis’ works are an astounding interpretation of humanity’s capacity to cause pain.  

            Perhaps the most interesting “victims” of the atomic bombs are the 4,000 pieces of human remains that scientists took the United States for research on the effects of radiation of human beings.  From 1967 to 1973, the United States repatriated the samples to Japan.  Some Japanese interpreted the United States’ss possession of the material as “spoils of war,” a reminder of who won and who lost.  Japan requested the remains be returned to their country because they viewed the body parts as the rightful national property of Japan.  What is fascinating is that the Japanese did not consider the samples as “pieces of individual human beings” returning in proper ceremony befitting their status as victims of the nuclear attacks, but as “pieces of information” withheld by the United States government.  “The body parts of victims of the atomic bomb were frozen in a special state of victimization.”[27] 

 

Japanese Nuclear Politics and Policies

            United States’s nuclear experiments conducted in the Pacific provoked intensive opposition in Japan.  On March 1, 1954, the United States’s “Operation Bravo” hydrogen bomb test sent a radioactive cloud drifting over a 7,000-square-mile area of the Pacific Ocean.  The Japanese Daigo Fukuryū-maru (Lucky Dragon 5) fishing vessel happened to be in the Bikini Atoll area at the time, and the fishermen aboard suffered radiation poisoning form the fallout.  One man of the 23-member crew, the radio operator Kuboyama, eventually died as a result.  Some people exaggeratingly call the Bikini Incident the third atomic bombing of humanity.  The United States’s reaction to the Bikini Incident angered many Japanese.  The United States government maintained that the fishermen were not seriously hurt and that they should not have been in the area in the first place.  The Japanese argued that only after all the crew were hospitalized and Kuboyama died, did the United States government take an active interest and attempt to make amends.[28] 

            The Japanese anti-nuclear movement did not begin until almost ten years after the end of World War II.  It was not until the latter part of United States’s military occupation that public commentary and commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were allowed.  Japan’s Peace Problems Symposium created their heiwaron (peace thesis) during the late 1940s and early 1950s.  They stated that the summons for peace must proceed through the levels of ningen (human), seido (system), and kokusai (international).[29]

Two events in 1954 provided impetus for Japan’s emerging peace movement, the Bikini Incident and a grassroots initiative by Japanese homemakers who collected more than 32 million signatures on an antinuclear testing petition.  Drawing on its status as a victim of atomic weapons, Japan championed a non-militarized and nuclear-free world.  Maruyama Masao, a leading intellectual of the anti-nuclear movement, stated that war in the atomic age is irrational because “these new super-weapons so increase the scale of destruction that both victory and recovery have become impossible.”[30]  Although by 1955, the Japanese peace movement focused mainly on global abolitions of nuclear weapons, it was also in opposition to nuclear power and propulsion.

            The mass memorials held annually on August 6 in Hiroshima became huge demonstrations against the United States and the Security Treaty between Japan at that country.  By 1961, the protests split between the various opposition parties and began to shift focus from anti-United States to concerns over Soviet and Chinese nuclear armaments.  However, the United States navy’s nuclear-powered vessels continued to be a source of massive demonstrations.  Beginning in 1964, only after years of careful negotiations between the United States and Japan to guarantee Japanese safety, Japan finally allowed the submarines into United States naval bases.  A United States nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that stopped over in Japan during 1968 faced substantial Japanese anti-nuclear protests.  In 1969-1970, the peace movement struggled against the renewal the United States-Japan Security Treaty.  By 1972, the peace movement had lost hold of many of its most evocative issues: United States military bases in Japan, the Security Treat, nuclear weapons, and arms production.  “The average citizen turned inward, to bask in Japan’s new international influence as an economic power and become consumed by material pursuits.”[31]

            The victim consciousness of the peace movement became part of the emerging ruling group’s neo-nationalism.  The conservative government did not hesitate to align itself with anti-nuclear policies.  The Liberal Democratic Party initially supported Gensuikyō (Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs), which was founded in 1955.  In 1961, the Liberal Democratic Party became involved with Kakkin Kaigi (Council for Peace and Against Nuclear Weapons).  The Japanese Diet unanimously passed a resolution in 1955 asking the United States government to postpone further atomic weapon tests in the Pacific.  However, the United States government rejected this request.  In 1957, the Japanese government issued strong appeals against Britain’s program of hydrogen bomb testing conducted near Christmas Island, and Japan asked the Soviet Union to halt atomic weapon experiments unilaterally.  Japan and the United States revised their Peace Treaty in 1960.  The United States agreed not to mount or stockpile nuclear weapons in Japan, and not to bring weapons of this nature into Japan without formal Japanese approval, which many asserted would never be granted.[32]

            Neither Japan’s government nor the Japanese anti-nuclear movement wanted United States’s atomic weapons in Japan, specifically at United States military installments on Okinawa.  The two Japanese groups agreed their country should remain free of nuclear armaments.  In December 1967, Japanese Prime Minister Satō Eisaku issued Japan’s “Three Nonnuclear Principles,” which stated that the Japanese would not manufacture, possess, or permit nuclear weapons to enter their country.  In spite of these principles, the United States military routinely brought nuclear weapons in and out of Japan.  In addition, the Liberal Democratic Party attached the lesser-publicized “Four Nuclear Principle,” which included dependence on the United States’s nuclear “umbrella” and the promotion of nuclear energy for peaceful use. [33]

            In 1991, Japan adopted new Official Development Assistance guidelines that consider the military and political policies of nations receiving or requesting Japanese economic aid.  One of the aspects investigated would be a country’s production of Weapons of Mass Destruction.  However, Japan is inconsistent in the application of the new guidelines.  In August 1991, Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu attended talks with Chinese Premier Li Peng.  Prime Minister Toshiki mentioned Japan’s new Official Development Assistance guidelines to Premier Li, and urged China to adhere to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  However, Prime Minister Toshiki decided to lift post-Tiananmen suspension of large-scale economic aid to China, alluding to a “special relationship” between the two countries.[34]

            If North Korea were to obtain nuclear weapons, they would be a direct threat to Japan’s security.  Japan is working to establish diplomatic ties with Pyongyang, and to secure North Korea’s unequivocal pledge not to develop atomic armaments.  “Japan supports the full safeguards inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, begun in the spring of 1992, in compliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty that Pyongyang signed in 1985.”[35]  As leverage in obtaining a nuclear-free Korean peninsula according to the 1991 Pyongyang-Seoul agreement, the Japanese government implied it might use its vast economic resources to persuade North Korea into cooperating.[36]

            Despite a prevailing sense of Japanese aversion to anything nuclear, as of 2000, Japan had fifty nuclear reactors providing roughly one-third of its energy needs, and plans to build more.[37]  Japan began in the 1960s to explore the commercial production of electricity through nuclear power, which was necessary for the energy-poor nation.  Their efforts initially met domestic opposition largely political in nature, but eventually resistance came only from local residents who did not want to live next to a nuclear power plant.  In 1974, Japan actually experimented with building a nuclear powered vessel.  Political problems and misfortunes beleaguered the Mutsu, which ended in failure because no Japanese seaport community wanted to serve as homeport for the ship.[38]

            Some people assert that Japan might develop nuclear armaments.  The country’s economic resources, advanced technological skills and competent military provide a perfect environment for atomic weapon creation.  In addition, Japan is well advanced in rocketry, the most challenging facet of generating deliverable atomic weapons.[39]  However, a country with nuclear capabilities needs to occupy a large territory to survive a major nuclear exchange.  Japan’s small land area does not provide enough protection regardless of how many nuclear warheads it could stockpile.  In early 2003, the United States began stressing that Japan needs to build an atomic arsenal, and use this munitions store to pressure China into a more forceful relationship with North Korea.  Japan’s Vice Foreign Minister Yukio Takeuchi told journalists in March 2003 that “no one in Japan, including the government, is seriously discussing nuclear armament.”[40]

To summarize, the nuclear destruction caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II created a victim consciousness in Japan, which is manifested in their effort to limit nuclear proliferation around the world.  Japan’s unique role as the only country to experience the devastation of nuclear weapons provided a basis for its authority on human suffering in war.  After United States military occupation forces eased restrictions of Japanese communications regarding the atomic bombs, the Japanese people conveyed their views on peace and nuclear weapons in books, films, and artwork.  Beginning in 1954, the Japanese peace movement worked toward the goal of slowing nuclear proliferation in the world.  Japan’s conservative government aligned itself with the peace movement.  Using its economic resources Japan has worked to persuade other countries to cooperate with existing nonproliferation treaties in recent years.   

Notes