Why won’t Japan speak out as an A-bombed country?

The Japanese government has announced it will abstain from talks underway at the U.N. headquarters on establishing a convention to outlaw nuclear weapons. By abstaining from the talks, Japan is effectively abandoning its opportunity as the world’s only atomic-bombed country to serve as a bridge between nuclear and non-nuclear states.

On the reason for Japan’s abstention, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida pointed out that the five nuclear powers of the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China are not taking part, and said that the talks “may have the opposite effect of deepening the divide between nuclear and non-nuclear states.”

In October last year, the Japanese government voted against a U.N. resolution on launching the talks. But at the time, Kishida expressed the view that Japan would actively take part in negotiations that were to begin in March.

The state of opposition…