Nuclear Option for Japan? : Startling hint of change out of Tokyo

Is Japan preparing to think about the unthinkable? For nearly half a century Japanese have regarded nuclear weapons with particular revulsion, understandable in a people that alone in the world has experienced the full horrors of atomic attack. Now, for the first time, comes an official hint that anti-nuclear policy may be undergoing a reconsideration, even if clear signs of a shift in the national mood are yet to appear.

The hint came when Japan refused to join with its peers at this week’s G-7 summit meeting in Tokyo in endorsing an indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The more than 140 signatories to the NPT, as it is known, are to decide in 1995 whether it should continue in force indefinitely or for a fixed period. Anti-proliferation forces prefer an indefinite extension as a means of bolstering efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons.

SEEMING SHIFT: But in its communique the G-7 cited an indefinite extension simply as an objective, the result of Japan’s refusal to commit itself to a stronger stand. Foreign Minister Kabun Muto sought to portray Tokyo’s balking as simply an indication of its interest in developing the kind of national consensus on the question that is so basic in Japanese politics. But Japan’s seeming shift on NPT extension in fact is a response to international realities more than anything else. It specifically reflects a fear that Japan could soon find itself the only power in northeast Asia without a nuclear arsenal.

CLEAR THREAT: North Korea, suspected by the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency of pursuing a nuclear weapons program, has for now suspended its threat to quit the NPT, but still refuses to allow international inspection of certain of its nuclear facilities. That only increases concerns that it may be getting steadily closer to producing fissionable material for a number of bombs. If the staunchly Stalinist North Korean regime goes nuclear, regional stabilty will be threatened. China and Russia, the region’s current nuclear powers, would have reason to be concerned. Japan and South Korea would have reason to be profoundly alarmed. Tokyo seems to be signaling that, at a minimum, it intends to keep its options open.

All this is understandable. Yet it hardly needs stating that the nuclear club doesn’t need another member, especially one whose imperial aggressivenes in the first half of this century still evokes fearful memories and broad suspicions across Asia. Clearly, though, the road to keeping Tokyo--and Seoul--nuclear-free runs directly through Pyongyang. Efforts to deter North Korea from becoming a nuclear power must be intensified. And both Japan and South Korea, where President Clinton is visiting this weekend, should be left in no doubt that they can remain indefinitely under U.S. strategic nuclear protection.