The antinuclear consensus that has defined Japan for almost six decades is beginning to break down. A senior advisor from the prime minister’s entourage Sanae Takaichiinvolved in the design of national security policy, stated before various media that the country “should possess nuclear weapons.”
Although the statement was presented as a personal opinion and described as “unrealistic” in the short term, its political impact has been immediate: it has reopened a taboo debate in the only country in the world that has suffered atomic attacks in wartime.
The words come at a time of maximum geopolitical tension in East Asia and coincide with the review of the National Security Strategy promoted by the Government of Takaichi, a leader with a markedly tough defense profile and aligned with Washington’s strategic axis.
Officially, the Executive insists on its adherence to the three non-nuclear principles—not possessing, not producing and not allowing the introduction of atomic weapons—but the ambiguity of the speech, together with the leaks from the government apparatus itself, has triggered political, social and diplomatic alarms inside and outside the country.
This questioning of the nuclear taboo does not arise in a vacuum. It is part of a much broader strategic shift that is transforming Japanese defense policy. The Takaichi Government has confirmed that Japan will double its military budget in the coming years, with a strong emphasis on the acquisition of offensive weapons, the development of long-range missiles and investment in advanced technologies such as cyber defense and artificial intelligence applied to the military field.
This quantitative and qualitative leap breaks with decades of self-imposed containment and consolidates Japan as one of the main military actors in the Asia-Pacific, in a context marked by rivalry with China and growing regional unpredictability.
The debate hits the most sensitive nerve in contemporary Japanese history: Hiroshima and Nagasaki not only caused more than 200,000 deaths but also marked entire generations with radiation, social stigma and a trauma that still defines the country’s political identity.
From that devastation arose, after the defeat of 1945, an almost sacred consensus against nuclear weapons, inseparable from the pacifist Constitution of 1947 and Japan’s explicit will to rebuild itself as a civil, not military, power.
That consensus became state doctrine in 1967, when the then prime minister proclaimed before Parliament the Three Non-Nuclear Principles: not possessing, not producing and not allowing the introduction of atomic weapons into Japanese territory.
The formula, which earned it the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974, allowed Japan to navigate the Cold War under the United States nuclear umbrella without crossing its own lines.
Today, however, that balance is beginning to erode. The reinforcement of the Chinese arsenal, the nuclear challenge from North Korea and Russia’s war in Ukraine are being used by sectors of power in Tokyo as an argument to erode a principle that for decades was politically untouchable.
Already in mid-November, government sources admitted that Takaichi had no intention of revising two of the three principles, aware of the enormous political and diplomatic cost that this would entail. However, these same sources acknowledged that the Executive observes with increasing discomfort the third principle: the one that prohibits the entry of nuclear weapons into Japanese territory.
According to this vision, maintaining it strictly could make it difficult for US ships with nuclear capabilities to call at Japanese ports and, in a regional crisis scenario, weaken the credibility of the deterrence offered by the alliance with Washington. The debate, therefore, does not revolve so much around manufacturing the bomb as accepting its tacit presence on Japanese soil.
The problem for the Government is that this strategic logic clashes head-on with a public opinion largely opposed to any erosion of the nuclear taboo. A newspaper survey Asahi Shimbun conducted this year shows that nearly 70% of Japanese believe that the country should maintain the three anti-nuclear principles unchanged: 45% are firmly in favor and another 24% clearly lean towards that position.
Even polls more favorable to the revision reflect a deeply divided society, with a majority still reluctant to cross a line that many consider moral rather than military. In Japan, the legitimacy of security policy is not measured only in terms of military deterrence, but of historical memory and moral responsibility.
It is not the first time that this taboo has been put to the test, and the precedent weighs: in 1999, the then parliamentary deputy minister of Defence, was suddenly dismissed after suggesting that Japan should consider acquiring nuclear weapons. That episode marked for years the limits of what can be said within political power.
That today an advisor close to the prime minister can verbalize a similar idea without immediate consequences reflects the extent to which the climate has changed. But it also explains the virulence of the reaction: for a substantial part of the country, it is not a simple strategic adjustment, but a break with post-war Japan and with the promise – never written, but deeply internalized – that Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not be repeated, not even under the pretext of security.
This approach has provoked a frontal reaction from the survivors of the atomic bombings, grouped in recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024.
In a statement, the group “strongly protested” against any attempt to revise a policy they consider the moral pillar of post-war Japan. The hibakusha warn that allowing the entry of nuclear weapons would turn the country into a potential base for nuclear war and, at the same time, a priority target of attack, dynamiting decades of commitment to disarmament and betraying the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Criticism has also come from the heart of the political system. Two former prime ministers have stressed that antinuclear principles are neither an ideological option nor a symbolic gesture, but rather a state policy. Fumio Kishida He recalled that this commitment has been supported by governments of different stripes and is part of Japan’s international credibility.
He went further: he warned of growing citizen unrest regarding the direction of Takaichi’s cabinet and demanded respect for a national consensus that, he warned, cannot be sacrificed on the altar of short-term strategic calculations.
Beyond the technical debate about deterrence, ports and military alliances, what is at stake is the moral legitimacy of contemporary Japan.
The country that made nuclear “never again” a hallmark of its identity today faces the temptation to relativize its own history. For millions of Japanese, the question is not only how to defend themselves in an increasingly hostile environment, but whether security can be built at the price of rendering meaningless the lesson learned from the absolute devastation suffered just over 80 years ago.
Volodymyr Zelensky and Chancellor Friedrich Merz hold a joint press conference in Berlin.
Reuters
The Japanese dilemma is not an isolated exception, but part of a broader trend among powers marked by the trauma of World War II.
Germany offers an eloquent precedent. After decades of military containment and pacifist strategic culture, Berlin declared a Turning point —a change of era— that translated into accelerated rearmament, an extraordinary fund of 100 billion euros for defense and the explicit acceptance of a more active military role in Europe.
Like Japan, Germany has justified this shift as an inevitable response to a deteriorating security environment. But there, too, the debate has reopened old questions about historical memory, moral responsibility, and the limits of military power in societies built on “never again.”
Japan and Germany, formerly defeated and pillars of the post-war liberal order, today face the same paradox: how to adapt to an increasingly militarized world without betraying the principles that gave moral legitimacy to their reconstruction. In both cases, the risk is not only strategic, but also identity-based.