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campaign to amend Article 9 is to remove the constitutional interpretive restriction that
prevents the participation of Japanese forces in collective security activities, success here
would open up a Pandora’s box.
Devoid of the legal restraint provided by Article 9, nationalists and their
sympathizers who want Tokyo to broach the debate of Japan possessing nuclear weapons
would no longer have to deal with a nuclear taboo rooted in the pacifist constitution. With
less risk of reprimand from the public and the media, they would be afforded the
unprecedented opportunity to make the case time and time again that Japan needs nuclear
weapons to serve as a deterrent for regional uncertainties and perhaps for the anarchy that
is concomitant to the ongoing global war on terrorism. That Tokyo would retain the
bilateral security alliance with Washington, which currently enables Japanese forces to
work with the United States to defend Japan and the region while keeping it protected by
the American nuclear shield, would no longer matter as much as it had earlier. The
revision of Article 9 as Japan continues to pursue the status of a normal country, the
meaning of which has noticeably changed over the past decade, places the “next order of
business” on the doorstep of nationalists and others who believe that it is right for Japan
to possess nuclear weapons.
Because the three nonnuclear are policy and not law, they serve only as
guidelines that can be abandoned or reformulated so that their meaning conveys the
semblance and impression of peace. Article 2 of the Atomic Energy Basic Law of 1956
states only that, “The research, development and utilization of atomic energy shall be
limited to peaceful purposes,” not specifically that it will not be used to build weapons.
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Japan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons to maintain the peace would be analogous with
Convention