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The contemporary security context has sharpened Japan’s dilemma regarding nuclear weapons. 

Japan is surrounded by several nuclear-armed neighbors and depends on US extended deterrence rather than its own nuclear deterrent. An opportunity was embedded in Japan’s role as G7 chair for the 2023 summit in Hiroshima, the site of the 1945 nuclear attack and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s electoral constituency.

The dilemma is one Japan has faced for decades. In 1967, then-prime minister Eisaku Sato introduced the Three Non-Nuclear Principles, adopted by the Diet, declaring that Japan will not possess, manufacture or introduce nuclear weapons. 

In 1968, Sato reaffirmed this goal in his Four Pillars of Nuclear Policy, adding commitments to work toward global nuclear disarmament, nuclear energy’s peaceful use and continued reliance on US extended deterrence.

In 1976, Japan ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in 1997 the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Japan has consistently submitted draft resolutions supporting disarmament activities to the UN General Assembly and participated in programs such as the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative.

But internal debate has persisted. A series of senior politicians — including a former minister and vice minister of defense, and a prominent opposition leader — have expressed concern about Japan’s lack of its own nuclear deterrent, especially against China. 

Former chief cabinet secretary Yasuo Fukuda claimed amending the Three Non-Nuclear Principles was “likely” after his deputy declared possessing tactical nuclear weapons would be constitutional.

A nuclear-armed North Korea sparked similar remarks. In 2006, after North Korea’s first nuclear test, the Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Research Council Chairman Shoichi Nakagawa proposed a public discussion of nuclear weapons acquisition.

In 2017, former defense minister Shigeru Ishiba proposed hosting US nuclear weapons on Japanese soil but was dismissed by the defense minister at the time.

Despite its technical capabilities, Japan continued to eschew acquisition, relying instead on the United States’ nuclear umbrella. Japan’s security dilemmas intensified recently, as leaders and the public perceive heightened belligerence from its nuclear-armed neighbors.

North Korea’s recurrent nuclear and missile tests of growing sophistication into Japan’s vicinity, along with direct verbal threats, sometimes require evacuating Japanese civilians.

In his aggressive nuclear rhetoric, President Vladimir Putin’s Russia resembles North Korea and has suspended peace treaty negotiations with Japan over Northern Territories. Japan also perceives China’s “no limits” embrace of Putin and “wolf warrior” diplomacy to have replaced China’s “peaceful rise.” 

China’s East and South China Sea military activities and firing of ballistic missiles into Japan’s exclusive economic zone have escalated tensions. Equally concerning is China’s abandonment of its minimal nuclear deterrent capability of about 400 nuclear warheads, which is estimated to increase to 1,500 by 2035.

Putin’s nuclear rhetoric led even Chinese President Xi Jinping to call on the international community to “jointly oppose the use of, or threats to use, nuclear weapons.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reignited Japan’s concerns, with former prime minister Shinzo Abe encouraging a national discussion on nuclear weapons-sharing arrangements with the United States. 

But Kishida, along with Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, expressed that such an arrangement was “unacceptable given [Japan]’s stance of maintaining the Three Non-Nuclear Principles.”

The durability of Japan’s commitment to abiding by the NPT raises an important consideration. Some security analysts have predicted Japan would seek its own nuclear deterrent in tandem with three of its neighbors’ nuclearization. Yet Japan’s decades-old nuclear abstention defies those predictions, which neglected other considerations.

Early in the Cold War, Japan’s commitment to global economic interdependence prioritized stability and global market access. This shaped incentives to remain a non-nuclear weapons state and reduce risks to its economy. Japan also capped defense spending at 1% of GDP. 

While by 2020 China had surpassed the United States as Japan’s top export market, Japan still relied on US extended deterrence despite its own technological capabilities.

Unlike in South Korea, Japanese public opinion remains opposed to nuclear weapons acquisition. A 2019 national survey found 75% of respondents supported ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

To reassure the public, Japan’s leaders launched the largest military expansion since 1945. While Article 9 of the Constitution famously renounced the right to maintain military forces, in 2015 the Diet voted to allow Japanese forces to deploy overseas to defend allies. 

In 2017, the 1% of GDP cap in defense expenditures was superseded, and in 2022 Kishida raised it to 2% by 2027 — on track to become the third-largest defense budget globally. Joint military drills have increased, and Japan has signed new defense agreements with Australia and the United Kingdom.

Japan also planned its G7 chairmanship of the Hiroshima summit carefully. Just as it championed the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, Japan has sought leadership in other realms.

In 2022 Kishida established the International Group of Eminent Persons for a World without Nuclear Weapons and became the first Japanese prime minister to attend the NPT review conference, where he presented the anti-nuclear “Hiroshima Action Plan.”

In early 2023, as Xi spent three days visiting Putin in Moscow, Kishida visited Kyiv. He invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to attend the G7 summit, concerned with troubling parallels between threats to Ukraine and threats in the Indo-Pacific. 

Kishida’s article in Foreign Affairs, published on the eve of the summit, expressed his commitment to reinforcing “a free and open international order.” Reaffirming the principles of an April 2023 G7 communique, Kishida envisioned “a world without nuclear weapons.”

To set the stage, Kishida launched the G7 summit by greeting G7 leaders at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. While the Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament disappointed nuclear abolitionists, it also reaffirmed Japan’s longstanding abstention from acquiring its own nuclear deterrent, even at this critical juncture. Japan has stayed its course.

John T Deacon is a Graduate Student at the University of California, Irvine. Etel Solingen is The Distinguished Tierney Chair in Global Peace and Conflict at the University of California, Irvine.

This article was originally published by East Asia Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons license.

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Three Chinese astronauts will conduct five life-science experiments within the next five months following the spacecraft Shenzhou-16’s successful docking with China’s Tiangong space station on Tuesday.

Three experiments will look into how stem cells, plant hormones and protein formation are affected by the microgravity environment while two others are aimed at discovering how nematodes, or roundworms, are hurt by gamma rays in space and how the damage can be measured through biomarkers.

The experiment kits have a total volume of 95 liters and weigh about 23.6 kilograms, said the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The experiments are aimed to provide information that will allow for astronauts to stay in space for longer periods of time, it added.

Chinese scientists and state media explained the goals and challenges of the five experiments on Tuesday and Wednesday. 

A protein formation experiment, led by CAS Academician Zhao Yufen, will be conducted for the first time in space to try to ascertain whether life on Earth was created domestically or brought from elsewhere.

“Different enzymes play their roles during the formation of protein – but how was it done before life was created?” Liu Yan, an associate professor at the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Xiamen University, explained to the China Science Daily on Tuesday.

“We want to find out how the three most important life elements – amino acids, nucleotides and phosphate groups – will work together in the microgravity environment in the space station.”

In the formation of protein, the genetic codes on DNA are transferred to a messenger RNA (mRNA) in a process called transcription, which can be accelerated by enzymes, according to Nature.com. Following the sequence on mRNA, amino acids can be linked together to become a polypeptide in a process called translation. Polypeptide then becomes protein.

Astronauts in the space station and scientists on Earth will run the same transcription and translation processes without enzymes simultaneously to see whether gravity plays a role in life creation. The other two gravity and two gamma ray experiments are more common and straightforward.

A team led by Cai Weiming, a researcher of the CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, will test whether Arabidopsis (thale cress) seeds will grow differently in the first 10 days of their bud stage with and without gravity. Before this, the first batch of Arabidopsis seeds were already sent to the space station by Shenzhou-15 last November. 

With the gravity on Earth, plant hormones can guide the roots to grow downward toward water. Scientists want to know how plant hormones will work without gravity.

Similar experiments about plant gravity perception have been done by Western astronauts, according to NASA’s website. 

Another team led by Long Mian, a researcher at the CAS Institute of Mechanics, sent liver and endothelial stem cells to the space station to see whether they will grow differently in the microgravity environment.

A team led by Sun Yeqing, a professor at the Dalian Maritime University, will manage two experiments involving nematodes.

“Nematodes are widely used in life science research as their genes have a certain homology with the human genome,” said Zhao Lei, an associate professor at the Dalian Maritime University. “We use nematodes to study the mechanism of biological effects of space radiation and look for biological markers for space radiation measurement.”

One of these two experiments is aimed at checking how nematodes can repair their DNA and reproduce themselves while exposed to gamma rays. Similar experiments have been done before in space. 

Another experiment will be conducted to measure the radiation damage suffered by nematodes and the associated relevant biomarkers, which will help astronauts improve their protection from radiation in the future.

“Nematodes are cultivated in a solution but they are not dormant,” said Cang Huaixing, a chief researcher for the space station’s scientific experiments at the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization under the CAS.

“They can only be brought from the laboratory to the rocket platform seven hours before the launch, and from the platform to the spacecraft five hours before the launch.”

On Tuesday morning, the Shenzhou-16 manned spaceship carrying three Chinese astronauts, namely Jing Haipeng, Zhu Yangzhu and Gui Haichao, and their experiment kits was successfully launched.  

After entering orbit, the spaceship docked with the space station. The Shenzhou-16 crew will rotate with the Shenzhou-15 crew in orbit.

Apart from life science experiments, the Shenzhou-16 crew will also conduct more than 50 in-orbit tests and experiments on space science and application payloads, Chinese media reported.

They will study novel quantum phenomena and high-precision space time-frequency systems, as well as teach a space class to students back on Earth. 

Read: China’s first Mars rover may sleep forever

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

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