Debate over a nuclear Japan is rising with Chinese, Russian, and North Korean threats, but the author argues abstention is rooted in Hiroshima/Nagasaki memory, Article 9, the Three Non-Nuclear Principles, NPT membership, and public allergy—not a lack of technical capability.

Tokyo’s path is stronger conventional counterstrike, tighter U.S. extended deterrence, and crisis management; going nuclear would wreck non-proliferation credentials and risk economic and alliance shock, even if some poll support is up.

ASEAN’s SEANWFZ and conventional-diplomacy order would see a nuclear Japan as a proliferation trigger (including for South Korea); capability without a bomb remains the model Japan is expected to keep.

Increasing strategic competition in East Asia is catalysing debate regarding the possibility of Japan going nuclear. This debate has predominantly focused on two elements: external opposition to a nuclear-armed Japan from China and Russia, and the potential that Japan already has sufficient military capability to go nuclear.

Importantly, however, Japan’s nuclear abstention strategy is fundamentally a product of the country’s domestic constitutional order, politics, international obligations, and identity. Therefore, Japan’s burgeoning military, although pointing towards a number of directions, will not necessarily traverse a nuclear switch. Instead, by developing more effective conventional forces to deter conflict, pursuing increased alignment with the United States, and enhancing its ability to manage the crises that it cannot avoid, Japan will work within a non-nuclear framework as a major strategic actor in East Asia.

In addition to these strategic factors, Japan’s post-war identity has been shaped by the unique experience of being the only country to have been subjected to atomic bombing. Its post-war pacifism has consequently been rooted in a profound nuclear aversion. This has been institutionally embedded in the post-war Constitution. Article 9 of the 1947 Japanese Constitution,........

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