The Buildup of a nuclear armament capability and the postwar statehood of Japan: Fukushima and the genealogy of nuclear bombs and power plants

Abstract

This essay was written under the impact of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear catastrophe to locate the nuclear power issue in a context broader than energy and environment. “Peaceful use of nuclear energy” was brought in by the US in the mid-1950s as part of its “psy” warfare to cleanse atomic power of the horrifying image of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki massacre. “Peaceful use” as such was accepted as a symbol of progress even by left-wing intellectuals. However, the Japanese ruling groups situated such use in their long-term military context. In the ensuing decades, the government carried out huge national nuclear programs and said they were genuinely for energy supply. But in 1965–72, the government undertook serious studies on Japan's nuclear arms, concluding that although Japan would stay non-nuclear “for the time being,” it would keep its techno-economic capacity ready to produce nuclear bombs any time they were needed. This essay examines Japan's nuclear power in reference to the major defining factors of the postwar Japanese statehood—the US–Japan security alliance (Anpo), Okinawa as the pivot of Anpo, the rightists' ambition to revive the glory of the prewar Empire, and Japan's position in the US–China relationship. The Fukushima disaster and Okinawa's resistance to military colony status rocked this whole structure, bankrupting the postwar statehood. People are now urged to define what comes next.

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