Japan's Nuclear Policy Research

On 15th October 2006, just after North Korea's declaration of a successful underground nuclear weapon test, Nakagawa Shoichi, the policy chief of Japanese Liberal Democratic Party, overtly made a discourse of "Possession of Nuclear Weapons" in a program on TV Asahi, Japan. This is unimaginable to a country that has been universally taken for bound to Peace Constitution and pursuing the Three Non-nuclear Principles as one of its basic national policies. In order to understand this situation better and provide useful suggestions for the future countermeasure to China as Japan's neighboring country, it is necessary to research Japanese nuclear policy.Japanese nuclear policies originated in the 1950's, which include "Atomic Energy Basic Law", "Framework for Nuclear Energy Policy" and so on as primary policy texts. Under these directives, Japanese nuclear industry has developed from a simple practice of energy safety in the beginning stage into a multiple strategic carrier integrating energy safety, economic development and diplomatic opening-up. It is foreseeable that Japan will stick to taking the policy of actively developing nuclear industry and advance policy sustain to nuclear safety in the future.Japan has long played a positive and active role on the international arena by pursuing "Atomic Energy Basic Law", "Three Non-nuclear Principles" and "Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapon" (NPT) as three pillars of "denuclearization" policy. However, Japanese "denuclearization" policy has been challenged by the opinion "possession of nuclear weapons", which is closely tightened with the changes of international situation in the post-cold war era and the whole trend of right deviation of Japan itself. Though Japan is in the possession of material and technological advantages of producing nuclear weapons, it can't afford the concomitant economic, political and diplomatic costs. Therefore, in the foreseeable future, these people favoring Japan's possession of nuclear weapons are not aiming to possess the nuclear weapon, but to snatch some correlative domestic and international interests, such as consolidating the US protection of Japan under the nuclear umbrella. Due to the contiguity of Japan and China, how to cope with Japanese nuclear policy is of significant meanings to China. On the nuclear energy policy side, besides actively developing a cooperative relationship, China should also keep an eye on Japan's monopoly on nuclear power technology and market so as to keep away from safety problems in the process of bilateral nuclear energy exploitation. On the nuclear weapon side, China should on one hand seek to maintain the international collaboration with Japan in the field of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and on the other to prevent Japan from further taking aggressive military activities.