Hiroshima Marks 81 Years Since the Bombing as Japan Expands Its Military

Japan marked the 81st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Thursday with a ceremony at Peace Memorial Park attended by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and representatives of 123 countries, Xinhua reported. The register of victims now holds 353,639 names. About 91,000 survivors, known as hibakusha, remain alive in Japan, with an average age of 86 as of the end of March. Takaichi restated Japan's commitment to its three non-nuclear principles, which forbid possessing, producing or permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons, The Japan Times reported.

Survivors used the anniversary to object to the direction of Japanese defence policy. Deutsche Welle reported that hibakusha and campaigners argue the military buildup erodes the pacifist commitment written into Japan's post-war settlement. Tokyo has raised defence spending, loosened restrictions on weapons exports and widened the operational role of the Self-Defense Forces, citing risks from China, North Korea and Russia.

Writing from India, The Hindu argued that the weakening of rules-based restraints on the use of force makes a comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons more urgent rather than less. That view, common across the Global South, holds that the countries most exposed to a nuclear exchange have the least influence over the decision to conduct one.

The two positions inside Japan are not easily reconciled. A government that keeps the non-nuclear principles while expanding conventional forces and exporting weapons is choosing one form of deterrence over another, and Japanese public opinion has moved along with the security environment rather than ahead of it.