Published on December 2, 2019.
Based on Kanji Ishizumi’s essay “Japan, Possess Nuclear Weapons!” published in the monthly magazine WiLL, this article discusses Japan’s nuclear armament debate amid what may be the worst security environment in East Asia since the war.
It points to North Korea’s nuclear and missile development, South Korea’s move to abandon GSOMIA, China’s military expansion, and America’s retreat from its role as the world’s policeman, warning of the danger of Japan relying solely on the U.S.–Japan alliance and the American “nuclear umbrella.”
It also introduces the argument that Japan, having suffered nuclear attacks twice, should possess nuclear weapons in order to prevent a third nuclear catastrophe, drawing on Israel’s security policy as an example.

December 2, 2019
To ask the very country that dropped those nuclear bombs to protect us is just like asking the criminal who stabbed you twice with a knife to serve as your bodyguard.
The day before yesterday, I learned for the first time of Kanji Ishizumi.
Born in Kyoto Prefecture in 1947.
While studying at the Faculty of Law of Kyoto University, he passed both the higher civil-service examination and the bar examination.
After graduating first in his class from the university, he entered the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, then obtained a master’s degree from Harvard Law School and completed a master’s course in securities law at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1978, he was admitted to the doctoral program at Harvard Law School.
After working at the New York Wall Street law firm Sherman & Sterling, he opened Chiyoda International Management Law Office in 1981.
He is the representative of the Leyden Ishizumi Law Office in Berlin.
As an international lawyer, he has many achievements, mainly in the United States and Europe.
In 2007, after passing a difficult examination, he converted to Judaism and became a Japanese Jew.
He is a U.S.-certified educational consultant.
The following is from his essay published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine WiLL under the title “Japan, Possess Nuclear Weapons!”
Kanji Ishizumi, Jewish international lawyer.
It is an essay that not only the Japanese people but people throughout the world must read.
If we simply stand by and watch, will America protect us?
No, no.
Constitutional revision and the like do not matter; now is the time for Japan to become a true nation through “nuclear armament.”
The nuclear victim nation is precisely the one that should possess nuclear weapons.
At present, the security environment surrounding Japan has become so dangerous that it may be called the worst since the war.
In East Asia, North Korea has not stopped its nuclear development and continues to launch ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, while South Korea, aiming to realize a unified state with that same North Korea, has gone so far as to abandon GSOMIA and is trying to sever its relations with Japan and the United States.
As for the United States, former President Obama simply stood by and watched Russia’s occupation of Crimea, and although he said that America would intervene militarily if Syria used chemical weapons, no military intervention was realized.
Finally, President Trump withdrew American forces from Syria, where Russia and Iran were actively intervening, in a manner that abandoned the Kurdish forces, America’s comrades-in-arms, on the battlefield, while in Venezuela he missed the chance to overthrow a Russian puppet regime because he could not carry out a military invasion.
In this way, as the United States has relinquished its role as the world’s policeman and is completely preoccupied with the domestic political problem of impeachment, China, the greatest threat, is taking advantage of that opening, continuing its military expansion, especially the strengthening of its naval power, in order to seize hegemony over the western half of the Pacific, and is trying to take control of the South China Sea and other areas backed by its powerful military strength.
Under such circumstances, many Japanese still appear to believe in the security provided by the U.S.–Japan alliance and America’s “nuclear umbrella.”
There even seems to be a tendency to think that the close friendship between Prime Minister Abe and President Trump has made the U.S.–Japan alliance stronger.
Regardless of this unstable East Asian situation, I have long believed that Japan should possess “nuclear weapons.”
The trigger for this was that I came to study why, even though dozens of short-range missiles are fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel, my ancestral homeland, on some days, a large-scale war like another Middle East war cannot be launched against it.
Although America is Israel’s most important ally, more than a lifeline, Israel does not give it extraordinarily special treatment, such as Prime Minister Abe rushing over after buying a gold golf club, or even preparing a chair in a ringside sumo seat, something even His Majesty the Emperor has not done.
On the contrary, Israel sends spies into the United States, refuses to extradite those Israeli spies even when arrest warrants are issued by the FBI, and secretly carries out nuclear possession without any permission whatsoever from America.
Originally, my view is that the nuclear victim nation is precisely the one that has the right to possess nuclear weapons.
If a nation has suffered nuclear damage not once but twice, it is only natural to think, “What has happened twice may happen a third time,” and to ensure that there is no third time.
To ask the very country that dropped those nuclear bombs to protect us is just like asking the criminal who stabbed you twice with a knife to serve as your bodyguard.
To be continued.