The issue of nuclear war and nuclear disarmament have repeatedly been submerged in recent years by issues of terrorist attack and wars such as those in the Congo, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza. But as former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans recently pointed out at the October meeting of the Australia-Japan International Conference on Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, “The truth of the matter is that there are at the moment, depending on how you calculate these things, somewhere between 13,000 and 16,000 nuclear warheads actively deployed, a great many of them still on hair-trigger alert even though the Cold War has been long over. And between them having a phenomenal destructive capability. The reality also is that we are on the brink - after years and years of containing rather well the emergence of new nuclear weapon states, with all the risks of either deliberate or accidental use of nuclear weapons that flows from the existence of nuclear weapons or nuclear arms proliferation …”

Against this background, and with a new administration taking office in Washington, there have been important but little noted developments in the world anti-nuclear movement. The present article examines the basis for the reemergence of Japan to leadership in the movement to halt proliferation and eliminate nuclear weapons. Japan Focus