Description
Japan has ambivalent positions to abolish and rely on nuclear weapons. Existing studies explain these contradictory behaviours by Japan’s nuclear victimhood and nuclearism: the former indicates Tokyo’s unique identification that Japan is the only country that suffered from atomic bombs, whereas the latter implies a belief in nuclear weapons to secure national security. Yet, these explanations assume that there is no relation between Japan’s nuclear victimhood and its reliance on nuclear weapons. My project intervenes at this point. It is argued that Japan’s nuclear victimhood paradoxically co-constitutes a hierarchy of nuclearism between (non)nuclear states. Specifically, Japan’s nuclear victimhood was generated under the condition that it did not criticise the possession of individual nuclear states, which contributed to naturalising the possession of the weapons and ultimately creating a hierarchical relationship between (non)nuclear states. To substantiate this argument, my project conducts archival research and process-tracing to uncover how Japan’s nuclear victimhood, and broadly its collective memory of nuclear weapons, was represented in official documents/speeches by politicians and government officials in Japan and the United States from 1945 to 1970. This project will contribute to nuclear studies, by illuminating the role of collective memory in the genesis of a hierarchy of nuclearism.
