The Debate | Opinion | East Asia

Japan Must Stand Up for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament

At a time of growing global disorder, responsible and diplomatic behavior is in alarmingly short supply.

Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae and U.S. President Donald Trump hold a summit meeting at the White House, Mar. 19, 2026.

The people of the world are holding their breath for signs of responsible and diplomatic behavior on the part of elected officials, at a time when courage and integrity are in short supply. Recognizing the risks from a dysfunctional world order in the nuclear age, many have looked to Japan to provide diplomatic leadership given its unique history and pacifist constitution. This is despite the fact that the exemplary and much-needed Article 9 is clearly on life-support and has been for more than a decade.

No one understands better than the Japanese people what is ultimately at stake on a planet awash with thousands of nuclear weapons, and a U.S. president with delusions of grandeur and unfettered access to the nuclear codes. Having experienced the worst nuclear crimes – the U.S. attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and also the tragedy of Fukushima, Japan can claim neither ignorance about how badly things could go nor the certainty that nuclear war will be avoided.

For Japan, this is not the time to pledge allegiance to the policies of war and dominance that the country practiced in the lead-up to 1945, and that the U.S. has practiced ever since. Such policies have not given rise to either country’s success or stability or to the world’s well-being. And at this point, the policies of war and dominance and widespread rearmament are bringing the world to the brink of annihilation that would make the atomic bombings and the nuclear power plant catastrophes pale by comparison.

The first step the Japanese government must undertake is to condemn wars of aggression being waged by its friends, the U.S. and Israel. But condemnation is not enough. Japan must play an active role in winding down these conflicts before more people die, more infrastructure is destroyed, the global economy suffers total collapse, or the prospect of nuclear war turns into reality. 

Japan should make it abundantly clear that it considers the war on Iran to be illegal, immoral, cruel, and unnecessarily dangerous to West Asia and the world. Just as it resisted U.S. President Donald Trump’s call to help escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, Japan should now urge the U.S. to go home and restart – in earnest – diplomatic efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program. It should also send a clear message to Israel that its horrific brutalization of the Palestinian people and the wider region outrages the conscience of humanity.

Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae’s recent visit to Washington, D.C. failed miserably in this regard. While we understood the difficult shoals that she needed to navigate, we were embarrassed by her propitiating the unhinged U.S. president, complimenting his good looks, enduring his insulting, inappropriate, and chronologically absurd comment about Pearl Harbor, and, worst of all, saying to Trump, “I firmly believe that it is only you, Donald, who can achieve peace across the world.”

Such flattery might seem a bit misplaced given that Trump bombed seven countries his first year back in office and has since kidnapped the president of Venezuela, threatened war against Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, and Panama, and begun an illegal and immoral war against Iran that has brought devastation to Iran, chaos to the region, trampled on the United Nations, and upended much of the world economy – a war that has the support of 9 percent of the Japanese public.

In addition, having previously condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Japan now must accept Russia’s legitimate security concerns and emerge as a negotiator in ending the Ukraine war. This could restore friendly and peaceful relations with Russia, which is Japan’s neighbor.  

And beyond helping to end the existing hot conflicts, Japan should play a role in promoting and embracing regional harmony in East Asia, by also pursuing friendly relations with China, recommitting to the one China policy, disavowing statements and plans to get involved in a conflict over Taiwan, and helping to end the decades of war between North and South Korea. Japan should pledge Article 9 to be its most sacred national commitment and after decades of protest, turn the calls to close the Okinawa military bases into reality. The last thing the world needs is East Asia on fire. 

The second step for the Japanese government is to double down on its three non-nuclear principles, and to go further by committing to attend the First Review Conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, followed by the signing and ratification of the treaty. 

The stories of what has happened to Japan and the Japanese people in the nuclear age are ones that deserve to be told not just until nuclear weapons are no longer with us, but for millennia. Although the oleander did come back to Hiroshima in the spring of 1946, the scars of the bombings continue to be carried by the survivors and their descendants, more than 80 years later, demonstrating the long-term effects of the use of nuclear weapons. 

Although the primary cause of the Fukushima disaster was a tsunami, it too demonstrates the long-term impacts of nuclear technologies, as it is highly unlikely that parts of the Fukushima prefecture will be inhabited again any time soon. There was also the Daigo Fukuryu Maru incident that demonstrated that hydrogen bombs, which were thousands of times more powerful than the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, could spread their deadly poisons far and wide, killing people at great distances. The explosions conducted during the so-called nuclear testing period, like Castle Bravo in the Marshall Islands that sickened Japanese fishermen, continue to kill people to this day. Trump has even recently threatened to resume nuclear testing.

The stakes could not be higher for the world or for Japan. A nuclear war today, fought with hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons, would not just create far bigger tragedies than those that the Japanese people have endured, it would also create almost unimaginable environmental changes, such as ozone layer destruction and the dreaded nuclear winter – a potential death knell to us all. Such environmental changes, regardless of whether Japan would be a party to the war, would call into question the very survival of the Japanese people. Nuclear famine caused by nuclear winter would be especially detrimental to countries like Japan that rely on energy and food imports to sustain their populations.

Japanese civil society is to be praised for its contributions to nuclear disarmament discourse since the dawn of the nuclear age. From the hibakusha, who’ve been honored for their tireless efforts, including with deserved recognition for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, to other anti-nuclear organizations that have recently come together under the banner of the Japan Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, they have been steadfast supporters of nuclear disarmament at home and in international fora. It is time for the Japanese government to listen to them. The remaining first generation hibakusha are dying. They deserve to leave this planet with a hope that a better future, one they’ve fought for so passionately and selflessly, is possible.

We understand that there is a level of hubris in two Americans calling on the Japanese government to take our own government to account and to do what our own leaders have failed at so spectacularly. But we have repeatedly called on our own government to abandon the policies of war, to embrace peace, and to lead the world towards nuclear disarmament. Like so many in the peace and disarmament movement, we are desperate to reverse the course of current events. From the rubble of the current geopolitical order, we call on Japan to emerge on the right side of history. 

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The people of the world are holding their breath for signs of responsible and diplomatic behavior on the part of elected officials, at a time when courage and integrity are in short supply. Recognizing the risks from a dysfunctional world order in the nuclear age, many have looked to Japan to provide diplomatic leadership given its unique history and pacifist constitution. This is despite the fact that the exemplary and much-needed Article 9 is clearly on life-support and has been for more than a decade.

No one understands better than the Japanese people what is ultimately at stake on a planet awash with thousands of nuclear weapons, and a U.S. president with delusions of grandeur and unfettered access to the nuclear codes. Having experienced the worst nuclear crimes – the U.S. attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and also the tragedy of Fukushima, Japan can claim neither ignorance about how badly things could go nor the certainty that nuclear war will be avoided.

For Japan, this is not the time to pledge allegiance to the policies of war and dominance that the country practiced in the lead-up to 1945, and that the U.S. has practiced ever since. Such policies have not given rise to either country’s success or stability or to the world’s well-being. And at this point, the policies of war and dominance and widespread rearmament are bringing the world to the brink of annihilation that would make the atomic bombings and the nuclear power plant catastrophes pale by comparison.

The first step the Japanese government must undertake is to condemn wars of aggression being waged by its friends, the U.S. and Israel. But condemnation is not enough. Japan must play an active role in winding down these conflicts before more people die, more infrastructure is destroyed, the global economy suffers total collapse, or the prospect of nuclear war turns into reality. 

Japan should make it abundantly clear that it considers the war on Iran to be illegal, immoral, cruel, and unnecessarily dangerous to West Asia and the world. Just as it resisted U.S. President Donald Trump’s call to help escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, Japan should now urge the U.S. to go home and restart – in earnest – diplomatic efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program. It should also send a clear message to Israel that its horrific brutalization of the Palestinian people and the wider region outrages the conscience of humanity.

Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae’s recent visit to Washington, D.C. failed miserably in this regard. While we understood the difficult shoals that she needed to navigate, we were embarrassed by her propitiating the unhinged U.S. president, complimenting his good looks, enduring his insulting, inappropriate, and chronologically absurd comment about Pearl Harbor, and, worst of all, saying to Trump, “I firmly believe that it is only you, Donald, who can achieve peace across the world.”

Such flattery might seem a bit misplaced given that Trump bombed seven countries his first year back in office and has since kidnapped the president of Venezuela, threatened war against Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, and Panama, and begun an illegal and immoral war against Iran that has brought devastation to Iran, chaos to the region, trampled on the United Nations, and upended much of the world economy – a war that has the support of 9 percent of the Japanese public.

In addition, having previously condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Japan now must accept Russia’s legitimate security concerns and emerge as a negotiator in ending the Ukraine war. This could restore friendly and peaceful relations with Russia, which is Japan’s neighbor.  

And beyond helping to end the existing hot conflicts, Japan should play a role in promoting and embracing regional harmony in East Asia, by also pursuing friendly relations with China, recommitting to the one China policy, disavowing statements and plans to get involved in a conflict over Taiwan, and helping to end the decades of war between North and South Korea. Japan should pledge Article 9 to be its most sacred national commitment and after decades of protest, turn the calls to close the Okinawa military bases into reality. The last thing the world needs is East Asia on fire. 

The second step for the Japanese government is to double down on its three non-nuclear principles, and to go further by committing to attend the First Review Conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, followed by the signing and ratification of the treaty. 

The stories of what has happened to Japan and the Japanese people in the nuclear age are ones that deserve to be told not just until nuclear weapons are no longer with us, but for millennia. Although the oleander did come back to Hiroshima in the spring of 1946, the scars of the bombings continue to be carried by the survivors and their descendants, more than 80 years later, demonstrating the long-term effects of the use of nuclear weapons. 

Although the primary cause of the Fukushima disaster was a tsunami, it too demonstrates the long-term impacts of nuclear technologies, as it is highly unlikely that parts of the Fukushima prefecture will be inhabited again any time soon. There was also the Daigo Fukuryu Maru incident that demonstrated that hydrogen bombs, which were thousands of times more powerful than the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, could spread their deadly poisons far and wide, killing people at great distances. The explosions conducted during the so-called nuclear testing period, like Castle Bravo in the Marshall Islands that sickened Japanese fishermen, continue to kill people to this day. Trump has even recently threatened to resume nuclear testing.

The stakes could not be higher for the world or for Japan. A nuclear war today, fought with hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons, would not just create far bigger tragedies than those that the Japanese people have endured, it would also create almost unimaginable environmental changes, such as ozone layer destruction and the dreaded nuclear winter – a potential death knell to us all. Such environmental changes, regardless of whether Japan would be a party to the war, would call into question the very survival of the Japanese people. Nuclear famine caused by nuclear winter would be especially detrimental to countries like Japan that rely on energy and food imports to sustain their populations.

Japanese civil society is to be praised for its contributions to nuclear disarmament discourse since the dawn of the nuclear age. From the hibakusha, who’ve been honored for their tireless efforts, including with deserved recognition for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, to other anti-nuclear organizations that have recently come together under the banner of the Japan Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, they have been steadfast supporters of nuclear disarmament at home and in international fora. It is time for the Japanese government to listen to them. The remaining first generation hibakusha are dying. They deserve to leave this planet with a hope that a better future, one they’ve fought for so passionately and selflessly, is possible.

We understand that there is a level of hubris in two Americans calling on the Japanese government to take our own government to account and to do what our own leaders have failed at so spectacularly. But we have repeatedly called on our own government to abandon the policies of war, to embrace peace, and to lead the world towards nuclear disarmament. Like so many in the peace and disarmament movement, we are desperate to reverse the course of current events. From the rubble of the current geopolitical order, we call on Japan to emerge on the right side of history. 

Ivana Nikolić Hughes is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at Columbia University. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group to the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 

Peter Kuznick is Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of numerous books and co-author (with Oliver Stone) of The Untold History of the United States. 

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