Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

's are a parliamentary resolution (never adopted into law) that have guided Japanese nuclear policy since their inception in the late 1960s, and reflect general public sentiment and national policy since the end of World War II. The tenets state that ''Japan shall neither possess nor manufacture

nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear exp ...

s, nor shall it permit their introduction into Japanese

territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, belonging or connected to a particular country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually a geographic area which has not been granted the powers of self-government, ...

''. The principles were outlined by

Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

Eisaku Satō in a speech to the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

in 1967 amid negotiations over the return of

Okinawa most commonly refers to: * Okinawa Prefecture, Japan's southernmost prefecture * Okinawa Island, the largest island of Okinawa Prefecture * Okinawa Islands, an island group including Okinawa itself * Okinawa (city), the second largest city in th ...

from the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The Diet formally adopted the principles in 1971.

Overview

After the

atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, during World War II. The aerial bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civili ...

, Japanese public sentiment grew firmly opposed to the presence of nuclear weapons on Japanese soil, or even in Japanese waters."Resolution on the Rejection of the Visit of Nuclear-Armed Warships into Kobe Port"
Kobe City Council, 18 March 1975. During Eisaku Satō's first term as prime minister, this opposition became a major obstacle to his campaign pledge to end the U.S. occupation of

, returning the island to Japanese control. The U.S. military was thought to keep nuclear weapons on the island, though it did not confirm or deny such weapons, and Satō faced opposition to reacquisition unless the nuclear presence was removed. As a compromise, Satō appeased the United States by bringing Japan into the

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperatio ...

(NPT) in exchange for a nuclear-free, Japan-controlled Okinawa. In the years leading up to this agreement, Satō was forced to appease public concerns that his administration might favor a nuclear weapons program; to this end, he introduced the Three Non-Nuclear Principles in a December 11, 1967, address to the Diet. (Actually, the principles of nonproduction, nonpossession, and nonintroduction had been stated by Defense Agency Director-general Kaneshichi Masuda that May.) Satō worried, though, that the principles might produce too great a restraint on Japan's defense. To lessen their restrictive effect on the military, in a speech the following February he placed the principles within the broader framework of his Four-Pillars Nuclear Policy. The pillars, in mimicry of the three pillars of the NPT, were # To promote the peaceful use of

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...

, # To work toward global

nuclear disarmament Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term ''denuclearization'' is also used to describe the pro ...

, # To rely on the extended U.S.

nuclear deterrent Nuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons. As a sub-branch of military strategy, nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends. In addit ...

# To support the Three Non-Nuclear Principles. The fourth pillar left room for policy change in the future, calling for Japan to abide by the principles "under the circumstances where Japan's national security is guaranteed by the other three policies". The Diet passed a resolution formally adopting the principles in 1971, though they were not made law. Eisaku Satō was presented with the

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish language, Swedish and ) is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the Will and testament, will of Sweden, Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobe ...

in 1974, in large part for his work toward Japan's entry into the NPT. In his Nobel Lecture (on the seventh anniversary of his original statement to the Diet), Satō reiterated and discussed the Three Non-Nuclear Principles and expressed hope and confidence that future governments would adopt them as well. Every Prime Minister of Japan since Satō has publicly reaffirmed the Three Non-Nuclear Principles. However,

Japanese government The Government of Japan is the central government of Japan. It consists of legislative, executive and judiciary branches and functions under the framework established by the Constitution of Japan. Japan is a unitary state, containing forty- ...

-sponsored studies have been carried out in the past—and are suspected by many to be ongoing—to assess the feasibility of developing a nuclear weapons program. In recent years public officials and nuclearization advocates have been unprecedentedly vocal in questioning the principles, but the public remains committed to them.

References

Eisaku Satō's Nobel Lecture
11 December 1974.

''Chūgoku Shimbun Peace News'', 2 June 2002. * Campbell, Kurt M. and Sunohara, Tsuyoshi (2004). "Japan: Thinking the Unthinkable". ''The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices'' Ch. 9: 218–253.

6 August 2005. {{nuclear power in Japan Nuclear weapons policy Nuclear technology in Japan Politics of Post-war Japan Foreign relations of Post-war Japan Japanese defence policies Government documents of Japan

Overview

See also

References