Nakasone headed a subcommittee of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's committee to redraft the country’s pacifist postwar Constitution last year. He more or less represents the position of Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, who is all but certain to become the next prime minister and believes Article 9 of the Constitution banning offensive military action should be revised and that nuclear armament should be an option. Abe has maintained for some years that the Constitution does not stop Japan from acquiring nuclear arms, that it should acquire them, and that it is capable of making them within a week.

The island country already had 43.1 tons of plutonium at the end of 2004. If a nuclear reprocessing plant in the village of Rokkasho in Aomori Prefecture goes into operation next year, it will turn out four tons of plutonium a year during the first two years and eight tons thereafter, enough to make thousands of nuclear weapons. Given the determination of Abe’s faction, Japan's nuclear armament is only a matter of time.

That will shake the security structure around the Korean Peninsula to the core. A nuclear-armed Japan would also upset the power balance worldwide. When a criminal country that plunged millions of Asians into catastrophe in World War II aims at becoming again a military power armed with the bomb, it means that the postwar generation is brazenly perpetuating the wrongs of their fathers. It would trample on the victims of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is North Korea that is providing Japan with the excuse, and our government that is egging Pyongyang on. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso, when North Korea tested its missiles in July, said Tokyo has to thank the North. It is crystal clear what Japan will do if the North conducts a nuclear test.

President Roh Moo-hyun defended Pyongyang’s nuclear development when he said there was “some reason” in it. It may have been some kind of joke, but Japan can use the North’s nuclear program as an excuse to build the bomb. On top of it, our government is now systematically dismantling the Korea-U.S. alliance, based on which we can ask it to counter any Japanese threat to South Korea. Japan is having a high old time thanks to our administration's half-baked views on security.