{"id":60761,"date":"2026-07-19T14:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T14:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/60761\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T14:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T14:39:12","slug":"japan-needs-debate-on-nuclear-weapons-defense-minister-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/60761\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan Needs Debate on Nuclear Weapons: Defense Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        <a href=\"https:\/\/www.islamtimes.com\/en\/news\/1293382\/japan-needs-debate-on-nuclear-weapons-defense-minister\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/n01293382-b.jpg\" alt=\"Japan Needs Debate on Nuclear Weapons: Defense Minister\" title=\"Japan Needs Debate on Nuclear Weapons: Defense Minister\" class=\"img-responsive\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>            Islam Times &#8211; Japan&#8217;s defense chief said Tokyo needs a debate on nuclear weapons, as some European countries are seeking greater nuclear deterrence, local media reported on Sunday.Japan &#8220;cannot avoid touching&#8221; the issue, Shinjiro Koizumi said in an online program, according to Tokyo-based Kyodo News.<\/p>\n<p>Observing that Japan&#8217;s security environment has grown &#8220;harsher,&#8221; he argued that Tokyo needs to change a situation in which some topics are considered unacceptable to debate.<\/p>\n<p>Koizumi cited France and Finland&#8217;s pursuit of stronger nuclear deterrence.<\/p>\n<p>Finland&#8217;s parliament in June approved a bill that would allow nuclear weapons to be brought into the country, while French President Emmanuel Macron said in March that his country would increase the number of nuclear warheads.<\/p>\n<p>Japan, which relies on the US nuclear umbrella, is the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack.<\/p>\n<p>It maintains its three principles of not producing, possessing, or allowing nuclear weapons on its territory.<\/p>\n<p>Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi&#8217;s government invited backlash from opposition parties and some countries in December last year after a source involved in devising the country&#8217;s security policy said Japan should possess nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<p>Former Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera also said late last year that Japan needs to debate the future of its non-nuclear principles.&#13;\n  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Islam Times &#8211; Japan&#8217;s defense chief said Tokyo needs a debate on nuclear weapons, as some European countries&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6884,6462,2296,39566,17002,37000,360,3426,35734,23511,8129,8,220,999,8239,39565,33,258,8138,39570,8699,39567,39569,39568,20305,8130,52,5703],"class_list":["post-60761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-a","tag-are","tag-as","tag-chief","tag-countries","tag-debate","tag-defense","tag-deterrence","tag-european","tag-greater","tag-islam","tag-japan","tag-local","tag-media","tag-minister","tag-needs","tag-nihon","tag-nuclear","tag-on","tag-reported","tag-s","tag-said","tag-seeking","tag-some","tag-sunday","tag-times","tag-tokyo","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}