The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 9 | Issue 29 | Number 6 | Article ID 3570 | Jul 19, 2011

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Murakami, the No-Nuclear Principles, Nuclear Power and theBomb　　村上春樹、非核原則、原子力、原爆

Roger Pulvers

Murakami, the No-Nuclear Principles, NuclearPower and the Bomb

Roger Pulvers

Murakami Haruki's brilliant speech on June 9in Barcelona, Spain, delivered in acceptance ofthe International Catalunya Prize, hascontributed to the resetting of the anti-nuclearagenda in Japan.

In January 2009, in his acceptance speech forthe Jerusalem Prize in Israel, the author hadused his podium time to deliver a keenly aimedattack on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. InBarcelona, by turning his sights to "peacefuluses” of atoms, he again gave voice to theJapanese conscience of our era.

Murakami Haruki

“The recent earthquake came as a tremendousshock for almost all Japanese,” he told hisaudience in Barcelona. “Even we Japanese who

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are so accustomed to earthquakes werecompletely overwhelmed by the sheer scale ofthe damage . Gr ipped by a sense o fpowerlessness, we feel uncertainty about thefuture of our country.”

Murakami spoke of the depth and breadth oftrauma caused by the Great Eastern JapanEarthquake and the loss of life and damage tolandscape and property caused by the tsunamiand the nuclear accident that followed. Hewent on to criticize the government for havingfailed to strictly monitor the nuclear industryfor safety.

But it was when he turned to Japan's earlierexperience with nuclear disaster — the U.S.attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atombombs in August 1945 — that Murakami'sspeech took a radical turn.

“What I want to talk about,” he said, “is notonly the deaths of those two hundred thousandpeople who died immediately after thebombing, but also the deaths over a period oftime of the many who survived the bombings,those who suffered from illnesses caused byexposure to radiation. We have learned fromthe sacrifices of those people how destructive anuclear weapon can be, and how deep the scarsare that radiation leaves behind in this world,in the bodies of people.”

Murakami went on to link the radiationreleased in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with thatreleased in Fukushima.

“And now, today, sixty-six years after thedropping of the atomic bombs, the FukushimaDaiichi nuclear power plant has been spewingout radiation continuously for three months,polluting the ground, the ocean and theatmosphere around the plant. And no oneknows when and how this spewing of radiationwill be stopped. This is a historic experience forus Japanese: our second massive nucleardisaster. But this time no one dropped a bombon us. We set the stage, we committed the

crime with our own hands, we are destroyingour own lands, and we are destroying our ownlives.”

The speech took me back to 1969, whenfuturologist and Cold War military strategistHerman Kahn visited Japan. I was, for thisvisit, his occasional interpreter and guide. "TheJapanese will someday outgrow their nuclearallergy," he told me, adding that he believedJapan would possess nuclear weapons by themid-1980s. The American author of thebestsellers "On Thermonuclear War" (1960)and "Thinking about the Unthinkable" (1962),Kahn believed that nuclear war was bothprobable and winnable.

Herman Kahn

He explained to me that "tolerable" levels ofvictims would be in the "ballpark" of the tens ofmillions. He crunched his numbers, accordingto the game theory that he helped to refine,and found the United States coming out on top.The term "escalation" is attributed to Kahn; andin a Cold War era plagued by fear stemmingfrom the nuclear powers' deterrence strategyof mutually assured destruction (MAD), it was

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comforting to refer to his message: that,scientifically analyzed, America's future wassecure, if somewhat blistered by the death firesof internecine war.

In fact, Kahn — one of the prototypes thatStanley Kubrick used to create the crazedcharacter Dr. Strangelove (played by PeterSellers) in his 1964 antiwar film, "Dr.Strangelove or: How I Learned to StopWorrying and Love the Bomb" — was urged onduring that 1969 visit, and subsequently, byelements in the government here who wouldhave liked nothing more than to see Japanarmed with nuclear weapons.

Dr. Strangelove

Kahn's visit was welcomed by those in thehighest echelons of the Liberal DemocraticParty. Prime Minister Sato Eisaku was facing adifficult election in the coming January, andKahn's rosy predictions about the rise of aJapanese superstate gave comfort to the rulingparty. Kahn praised Japan and its leadership tothe hilt. Japanese people's opinions arevulnerable to influence from the outside. Aneminent American who feeds Japanesenationalism can have more sway than a mereJapanese politician in power.

At the time, two things struck me about Kahn's

pithy comment concerning a Japan with atomicweapons: the words "allergy" and "outgrow."

By labeling Japan's staunch stance againstpossessing such weapons or even allowingthem to enter its territorial waters as an"allergy," the inference was that, with sometesting and remedial care, this condition couldbe cured. By using the word "outgrow," Kahnwas explicitly calling Japanese convictions"immature."

Of course, we now know that the “allergy” wasa highly selective one. In fact, its rash was onlymaintained on the outside for publ icconsumption. Deep down, the ruling circles ofJapan had bargained away the three “nonuclear policies.” There was no allergy in thebody polity as seen by influential sectors of theruling elite.

It happens that I have a personal connectionwith a man who played a key role in the secretagreement allowing the possible presence ofnuclear weapons in Okinawa. Wakaizumi Keiwas my mentor during my early years in Japan.I met him the very next day after I first arrivedin September 1967. Still in his late 30s then,softly spoken and very kind, he was a professorat Kyoto Sangyo University, which had been setup with funds from conservative groups tocounter the left-leaning activities of manyJapanese universities in the polemical 1960s.

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Wakaizumi with Walt Rostow and LyndonJohnson

Wakaizumi's link with the secret pact cameabout at the urging of Henry Kissinger, U.S.President Richard Nixon's national securityadviser. Wakaizumi, then a special envoy toPrime Minister Sato, accompanied the primeminister to Washington and, on November 21,1969, the two of them went to the White House,where they were called by Nixon into a privateroom. There, the prime minister and thepresident signed a secret document, witnessedby Wakaizumi, that granted the U.S. the right,with consultation, to bring nuclear weapons inan emergency into Okinawa after its reversionto Japan. (Only four people knew of theexistence of this pact violating Japan's non-nuclear principles, the fourth being Kissinger.)

In 1994, Bungeishunju published his book,"Tasaku Nakarishi o Shinzemuto Hossu" —which in English means "I Had No Recourse."In that 19-chapter, 600-page work he pours outhis heart not only about the secret pact but alsohis vision for the future of Japan.

The no-nuclear principles, adopted as aparliamentary resolution in 1971, but neverenshrined in law, forbid Japan from possessingor producing nuclear weapons or permittingthem to be on its territory. The two main secretpacts in contravention of those principles are a1960 one allowing nuclear-armed U.S. planesand ships to enter Japan, and one from 1969regarding the reversion of Okinawa to Japanand the possible presence of such weaponsthere.

Despite the blatant transgressions of Japan'sno-nuclear principles, Japanese leaders — allmembers of the then-ruling Liberal DemocraticParty — consistently denied the existence ofthe agreements, in effect pulling the wooltightly over the public's eyes.

Murakami Haruki’s speech, linking the

radiation released in Hiroshima and Nagasakiwith that released in Fukushima, effectivelyrenders the three issues of the bomb, the no-nuclear principles and nuclear power as one. For decades, the Japanese government hasmaintained the façade of the no-nuclearprinciples, thereby leading the people tobelieve that they have rejected the belligerentuses of atoms in war for the peaceful uses ofatoms as a domestic power source. But ineffect, they are two sides of the same coin.

Japan's government, virtually synonymous inthose days with the Liberal Democratic Party(which held nearly unbroken power for morethan half a century until 2009), had forgedahead with the nuclearization of the powerindustry in the decades of growth after the warwithout any national debate on the multifariousissues of safety related to it. This railroadingthrough of lax laws and permissive regulationsindicated that the sleepers had been laid; andall that was then needed was to lay the trackstoward nuclear weaponry — and Japan wouldhave come of age.

Now that the Fukushima disaster hasdemonstrated the dangers of “peaceful uses” ofthe atom, the bomb and the power plant, withtheir inherent threats to human life, are linkedin the mind of the people.

Eloquent and spoken from the heart withoutartifice in his Barcelona speech, Murakamicame down hard not only on Tepco (TokyoElectric Power Co., operator of the nuclearpower plant) and on the governments that gavethem a virtually unfettered hand in nuclearpower development, but also on the entirepopulace of Japan who, over decades, allowedthis situation to fester in their name.

Murakami's use of the word “kaku” (nucleus, ornuclear) in reference to the power plant istelling. As a strict rule, Japan's nuclear powerindustry has avoided this word, preferring“genshiryoku,” meaning "atomic power." Kakuin Japanese brings to mind the very same

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power that fueled the bombs; and the powerindustry has painstakingly steered clear of anysuch association, knowing that the Japanesepeople's conviction to refuse either thepossession or introduction of nuclear weaponsin their country is steadfast, although clearlyelements in the government had a differentagenda, that is, to redirect weapons’ gradeplutonium for use in a bomb.

Murakami has persuasively rejected “atoms forpeace.”

“We Japanese should have continued to shout‘no’ to the atom,” he said with vehemence.“That is my personal opinion. We should havecombined all our technological expertise,massed all our wisdom and know-how, andinvested all our social capital to developeffective energy sources to replace nuclearpower, pursuing that effort at the nationallevel.”

His speech was given major coverage in thenational media, including in prime-time reportson television and radio. It is no accident that hechose to make this provocative speech on aforeign platform, as he did with his speechcritical of Israeli policies in the Middle East.This helps silence the opposition in Japan tothese propositions, especially when they aredelivered at such prestigious forums.

In addition, by speaking from abroad,Murakami equates Japan's problems with thoseof countries around the world, making clearthat the problem is global. This means thatultimately it can’t be solved by Japan alone. Italso suggests that Japan’s decisions can bejudged in light of the responses of other nationsto the crisis. Chancellor Angela Merkel ofGermany was able to announce her momentousdecision to shut down all of her country'snuclear power plants within the comingdecade, while Japan's seized-up governmentseems perpetually ensconced in a sarcophagusdropped over their heads by a profit-at-any-costindustry , an uncreat ive and capt ive

bureaucracy and an apathetic, meek citizenryfed on a broadly apathetic and meek mediadiet.

The sarcophagus burst open on March 11,2011. The media swiftly opened its doors toanti-nuclear journalists and activists; thegovernment, at the very highest levels, rushedout rough blueprints for alternative forms ofenergy; and prominent business people,Softbank’s Son Masayoshi notably among them,offered to develop environmental-friendly formsof energy if the government would give them anod, a wink and a helping hand.

Thanks to Murakami Haruki, the anti-nuclearmovement is now a common front, bolstered byanger at government-industry collusion andhope that, finally, something may be done towind down nuclear power and replace it withsources that do not destroy life and defile land,water and air.

I thought Herman Kahn wrong then and I thinkhim wrong now. The Japanese people are,more than ever, committed to maintain theirdeep-rooted aversion to things nuclear, and thisnow may extend, once and for all, to non-belligerent forms of atomic energy.

The three principles of Japanese apathy, whenit comes to things nuclear—“don't ask, don'ttell and don't do”—are things of the past. Weare now all unrealistic dreamers … butunrealistic dreamers who are beginning toaccept responsibility for our welfare.

Roger Pulvers is an American-born Australianauthor, playwright, theatre director andtranslator living in Japan. He has published 40books in Japanese and English and, in 2008,was the recipient of the Miyazawa Kenji Prize.In 2009 he was awarded Best Script Prize atthe Teheran International Film Festival for“Ashita e no Yuigon.” He is the translator ofKenji Miyazawa, Strong in the Rain: Selected

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P o e m s(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1852247819/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20). The Dream of LafcadioH e a r n(http://www.amazon.com/dp/4902075415/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) is his most recent book.Hew i l l t a l k(http://www.japansociety.org.uk/19987/the-dream-of-lafcadio-hearn-how-did-this-greek-irishman-conquer-japan/), sponsored by TheJapan Society, London, on October 24 on "TheDream of Lafcadio Hearn: How did this Greek-Irishman conquer Japan?"

R e c o m m e n d e d c i t a t i o n : R o g e rPulvers,Murakami, the No-Nuclear Principles,Nuclear Power and the Bomb, The Asia-PacificJournal Vol 9, Issue 29 No 6, July 18, 2011.

See articles on related themes

• M u r a k a m i H a r u k i(https://apjjf.org/-Murakami-Haruki/3571),Speaking as an Unrealistic Dreamer

Speech by Murakami Haruki on the occasion ofreceiving the International Catalunya Prize