Japan is the only non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council permitted under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to have a nuclear fuel recycling program.
Japan is the only non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council permitted under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to have a nuclear fuel recycling program.
When Yasuhiro Nakasone was prime minister, he obtained the backing of the United States to become a nation capable of possessing large amounts of plutonium that can be used in nuclear weapons, notwithstanding the fact that Japan is the only nation on which atomic bombs have been dropped.
Toward the end of 1982, shortly after he became prime minister, Nakasone was asked in the Diet by a member of the opposition Japan Socialist Party if he was an advocate of Japan possessing nuclear weapons.
Nakasone brushed off the suggestion and said, "If there is anyone who believes I favor Japan possessing nuclear weapons, they would be terribly mistaken. Only someone who has not done his research would say something like that."
However, when Nakasone served as head of the then Defense Agency in 1970, he invited a private group of experts to carry out research on the pros and cons of possessing nuclear weapons.
In a past publication, Nakasone has written, "With 200 billion yen ($2.5 billion at current exchange rates) in funds of that time, we would have been able within five years" to possess such weapons.
Based on the results of that research, Nakasone shortly thereafter flew to the United States and gave a speech in which he said, "As long as the nuclear deterrence of the United States functions against any nuclear threat directed at Japan, there is absolutely no possibility of possessing nuclear weapons."
Nakasone's nuclear strategy appeared to be one of not manufacturing nuclear weapons even while Japan may have possessed the ability to do so.
Explaining what Nakasone had in mind, Kumao Kaneko, 74, who served as the first head of the nuclear energy division at the Foreign Ministry, said, "Nakasone was of the opinion that having the ability to possess such weapons if the need arose would become a form of nuclear deterrent."
Regarding Japan's nuclear fuel recycling program, Nakasone said in a dialogue that was published in the monthly magazine Voice, "Japan would be able to achieve it independently without importing fuel from abroad."
However, many experts held the view that Nakasone's true desire was to leave open the possibility of Japan having the latent ability to build nuclear weapons.
Nakasone used his close personal relationship with U.S. President Ronald Reagan to seek a revision of the accord between Japan and the United States on nuclear energy.
Because Japan depended on the United States for the technology and resources when it was first installing nuclear power plants, Japan had to obtain the approval of the United States for every occasion when it wanted to remove plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.
In the negotiations to revise the nuclear energy agreement, Japanese officials argued for a change that would make it unnecessary for a 30-year period to obtain the approval of the United States to remove plutonium from spent fuel.
However, there were concerns within the United States about Japan eventually possessing nuclear weapons. One high-ranking U.S. State Department official of that time said that anything could happen over a 30-year period, including Japan leaving the NPT regime or rescinding the security treaty with the United States.
Nakasone tried various means to convince U.S. officials to put aside any concerns they had.
He said the Japanese archipelago would become an "unsinkable aircraft carrier."
He gave approval for Japan to provide technology to the United States that could be used in weapons. On economic measures, Nakasone lowered tariffs on cigarettes and allowed the yen to appreciate against the dollar.
Those measures in the defense and economic sectors gradually led to reduced opposition among U.S. officials, and all that remained was to gain the approval of Reagan.
In September 1987, at what would prove to be the last summit meeting between Nakasone and Reagan, Nakasone asked that the nuclear energy agreement be revised. Reagan indicated he would not oppose such a revision.
Two months later, Japan and the United States signed the revised agreement that gave Tokyo the ability to possess a large volume of plutonium until 2018.
However, technological problems as well as accidents delayed progress in the nuclear fuel recycling program. As a result, Japan has stockpiled about 10 tons of plutonium, enough to produce 1,250 nuclear weapons.
According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that amount of plutonium places Japan behind only the United States, Russia, Britain and France in the amount possessed.
With such an amount, Japan leaves itself open to suspicions from nations around the world that it was seeking to possess nuclear weapons.
The accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant occurred amid such circumstances.
The central government has run into problems cooling the storage pools at the Fukushima reactors that hold spent nuclear fuel.
An increasing number of government officials have begun to feel that the government will have to abandon the nuclear fuel recycling program.
That would mean nothing more than also abandoning the latent ability to possess nuclear weapons that has been passed down secretly and believed in by a small group of politicians, bureaucrats and scholars who feel such an ability is necessary for Japan to truly become an independent nation.
Nakasone was one of those who long held that belief.
However, in June, about three months after the Fukushima nuclear accident, Nakasone sent a video message to a conference that sought to spread solar power generation in Japan.
Nakasone admitted in the message that nuclear energy was capable of doing major damage to humanity and said, "I want to make Japan into a solar power nation by skillfully using solar energy."
That statement by the 93-year-old who had long pushed nuclear energy as a national policy was an expression of a drastic change in energy policy even before any such move was even being considered by the opposition Liberal Democratic Party that he once led.