US President-elect Donald Trump has on various occasions suggested that Japan’s nuclear armament would be permitted if the country did not “pay more” for the US military presence in the region. He has also suggested Japan’s nuclear armament could be in US interests. On March 27 of this year, Trump told The New York Times: “unfortunately, we have a nuclear world now. ... And, would I rather have North Korea have them with Japan sitting there having them also? You may very well be better off if that’s the case. In other words, where Japan is defending itself against North Korea, which is a real problem ... if Japan had that nuclear threat, I’m not sure that would be a bad thing for us.”
Two days later, Trump reiterated to CNN, as he similarly remarked to other media outlets, “Wouldn’t you rather, in a certain sense, have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?”
Perchance Japan’s acquisition of nuclear arms -- now a distinct feasibility -- would not be a “bad thing” for the US in Trump’s universe, but it would almost certainly mean catastrophic upheaval in East Asia.
Japan’s newly appointed Defense Minister Tomomi Inada -- widely predicted to become Shinzo Abe’s successor as prime minister -- has maintained that Japan should obtain nuclear weapons as have other members of Abe’s cabinet; this despite the fact there is extensive evidence indicating repentance is lacking for crimes committed during Japan’s colonial period and World War II.
In a 2013 piece for The National Interest, Jacob Heilbrunn noted that nationalists in Japan such as Abe and Inada “have never really conceded that Tokyo did anything wrong before or during the war. ... You will be hard-pressed to find much, if any, mention of Japan’s wartime alliance with Nazi Germany. ... Japan emerges as a power that was simply trying to defend its own interests.”
Amitai Etzioni, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University who escaped Nazi Germany as a child, wrote in a 2014 article: “Germany gradually came to fully acknowledge the evils of the Nazi regime ... and made extensive mea culpas and apologies. Above all, it has instituted extensive, elaborate, and effective educational programs in its schools -- and military -- to ensure that Germany will never, ever again engage in the kind of horrific, barbarous conduct that took place during World War II. ... None of this happened in Japan. ... Instead, it seems to be moving in the opposite direction.”
Notwithstanding episodic efforts by Abe and Inada -- to some degree reminiscent of Trump -- to backtrack their most incendiary and ignominious articulated views while poised upon the world stage, proof of any sincere metamorphosis is difficult to come by.
Inada shares Abe’s deeply controversial perspectives concerning the country’s 20th century history, which is reported to be the vital determinant in her gaining his favor and unusually rapid rise within Japan’s political hierarchy. In 2003 she lost a defamation suit against members of the Japanese media while representing the families of two military officers responsible for atrocities committed preceding the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, when an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were murdered by Imperial Japan’s invading forces. After her promotion to defense minister in August, Inada stated that the historical fact of Japan’s invasion into China was subject to interpretation, and deftly evaded answering whether or not she condemned Japan’s wartime atrocities.
Inada has also fought vigorously in order to recast the contentious matter of wartime Japan’s system of sexual slavery. She was a signatory to a 2007 advertisement which appeared in the Washington Post denying Korean women were forced by the Imperial Japanese Army into sexual servitude, and pronouncing -- as she has personally on multiple other occasions -- that the estimated hundreds of thousands of women from occupied Asian countries trafficked into sexual enslavement for the Japanese army were voluntary prostitutes. In the wake of the December 2015 “Korean Comfort Women Agreement,” which did not acknowledge Japan‘s legal responsibility, Inada publicly contended that the statue outside Seoul’s Japanese Embassy should be removed before funds for former victims were released.
A commentary published in The Diplomat earlier this year by Prakash Panneerselvam and Sandhya Puthanveedu reported nothing has changed in Abe’s attitude with respect to the “comfort women” issue, writing: “in spite of the agreement, Abe’s views on the matter apparently remained unchanged. In his speech in the Upper House of the Japanese Diet, he stated that the agreement with the Republic of Korea doesn’t constitute an acknowledgement of Japanese involvement in sex slavery or war crimes ... Even many senior politicians from Abe’s cabinet still argue there is no evidence of the imperial Japanese military coercing any comfort women into sexual services.”
Both Abe and Inada have been devoted visitors to the Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo, which as stated by the Japan Times is “regarded by many Asians as a symbol of Japan’s lack of repentance for the war.” The memorial glorifies 1,068 convicted war criminals including wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. A shrine pamphlet geared toward children asserts, “War is a really tragic thing to happen, but it was necessary in order for us to protect the independence of Japan and to prosper together with Asian neighbors.”
Furthermore, they are advocating for revision of Japan’s pacifist postwar constitution to allow expansion of Japan’s military capabilities. In a Nov. 12 article with subheading “Shinzo Abe has accumulated unprecedented power,” The Economist observed that considerable progress has already been made with legislation passed in 2015 removing certain restrictions on the country’s “Self-Defence Forces.” Abe has recently pledged to do his “utmost to achieve a (constitutional) revision” within his term.
According to an article published earlier this month in The Japan Times, Japan possesses 48 tons of plutonium, stockpiled domestically and in Europe, and how it will be utilized “remains uncertain.” A 1988 bilateral agreement between Tokyo and Washington on the peaceful use of nuclear energy will expire in July 2018, leaving unclear the future of Japan’s nuclear policy.
Korea and the global community must do everything in its power to prevent Japan from acquiring nuclear weapons, while contemporaneously pursuing reconciliation between relevant countries. A significant step Japan could one day take toward making real amends would be to establish legal prohibitions akin to Austria or Germany’s strict laws against Holocaust denial with respect to Imperial Japan’s crimes against humanity.
By Robert Park
Robert Park is a founding member of the nonpartisan Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, minister, musician and former prisoner of conscience. --Ed.
