A senior government official said on the 10th that Japan should spell out an exception to its non-nuclear principles allowing nuclear weapons to be brought in during an emergency, Kyodo News reported, a step that would effectively end the no-introduction principle as written.
The official made the remark to reporters, the news agency reported. It comes as the government prepares to revise its three security-related documents.
The non-nuclear principles are the basic policy on nuclear weapons. They consist of not possessing, not producing and not allowing the introduction of nuclear arms into Japan.
The official argued that an exception to the no-introduction principle should be written into the revised documents. Under that view, Japan would permit nuclear weapons to enter the country in an emergency.
Writing the exception into the documents would leave the no-introduction principle in place in name only. The other two principles would be unaffected.