Japan Behind the News

 

Why the Japanese Government Keeps Denying Its Secret Nuclear Agreement

 

Cultural News 2009 August

 

 

By Motoaki Kamiura, Military Analyst

Translated by Alan Gleason

 

     For years rumors have circulated of a secret Japan-U.S. agreement to permit the movement of American nuclear weapons through Japan. Ryohei Murata, a former vice foreign minister, recently admitted that this was so: Japan tacitly allowed U.S. warships carrying nuclear weapons to dock at Japanese ports and pass through Japanese waters. Yet the government continues to aver that no such pact ever existed.

 

     What makes this stance absurd is the fact that the secret agreement is no secret. Declassified American documents describe it in detail. U.S. Rear Admiral Gene La Roque mentioned it in testimony as far back as 1974, and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin Reischauer did so again in 1981.

 

     Yet Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura’s response to Murata’s statement was the usual refrain: no such agreement exists. When the other party to the pact, the U.S., has already released documents proving it does, why does Japan continue to maintain that it does not?

 

    The Cold War is long over, and U.S. naval vessels dispatched overseas no longer carry nuclear weapons. Few if any observers think that admitting to the existence of this agreement would cause any problems for the U.S.-Japan alliance.

 

     But the Japanese government has its reasons for staying on message. Three, in fact -- the Three Non-Nuclear Principles which, though never made into law, are Japan’s de facto policy on nuclear issues. The principles are that Japan shall neither possess nor manufacture nuclear weapons, nor permit their introduction into Japanese territory. The government fears that open acknowledgement of its blatant violation of Principle No. 3 all these years could render the principles completely toothless. It is not quite ready to do that.

 

     If the principles lose their credibility as government policy, pressure on Japan -- both internal and external -- to go nuclear (including the introduction of U.S. nukes) would grow intense. North Korea’s recent nuclear tests have already raised the ante in that regard.

 

    The government thus feels compelled to deny the existence of a secret agreement violating the Non-Nuclear Principles precisely because it fears what would happen if those principles were proven moot.

 

    Conservative elements in the Japanese media are already clamoring for the government to admit that it has been letting U.S. nukes into Japanese territory all along, and to take that logic a step further to reinforce Japan’s nuclear umbrella.

 

    Motoaki Kamiura is a Tokyo-based military analyst. He appears frequently on national television programs.

    Alan Gleason is an editor, writer, and Japanese-English translator. He lives in Tokyo.