TOKYO: North Korea’s announcement on Monday that it has tested a nuclear bomb is set to push Japan to expand its own military and stir debate on what was once the ultimate taboo of developing atomic weapons itself.

The test comes with Japan in the midst of expanding its defence posture, 60 years after it was defeated in World War II and forced by the United States to renounce the right to a military.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office just two weeks ago, is a sworn hawk on North Korea who has long supported a larger role for Japan’s military alongside its ally the United States.

“We need to make a stern response and North Korea will be responsible for all the consequences,” Abe said on Monday as he visited Seoul “Japan for its part will immediately start studying a response with stern measures.”

Analysts expect North Korea’s test to boost the hand of Abe, who wants to rewrite the pacifist 1947 constitution and allow Japanese troops to engage in overseas operations alongside allies.

Washington currently protects Japan by treaty as the country was stripped of its right to maintain an armed forces after defeat in World War II.

But after North Korea in 1998 fired a missile over Japan’s main island, Japan and the United States started working in earnest on a missile shield.

Abe said on Monday that Japan would step up cooperation with the United States, including on missile defence, “to maintain the safety of the Japanese country and people.”

The United States stationed its first surface-to-air Patriot missiles in Japan after North Korea in July test-fired seven missiles in Japan’s direction.

Despite its pacifism and US guarantees to protect Japan, the country now has around 240,000 troops on active duty and an annual military budget of 4.81 trillion yen (41.6 billion dollars).

A draft new constitution would preserve Japan’s official pacifism but acknowledge it has a military — and not the “Self-Defence Forces” as they are currently known.

Japan is also believed to be capable of assembling nuclear weapons if it makes the political decision to do so.

But it would be a drastic change of policy for Japan, the only nation to suffer nuclear attack, which has long campaigned to eliminate atomic weapons.

More than 210,000 people were killed in the 1945 US atomic bombings that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“I can’t reject the possibility that a nuclear deterrent system would be developed in the region,” said Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a professor of international politics at Aoyama Gakuin University.

“Even if the North’s missiles do not reach the United States, they could easily put Japan in the firing range and destroy it,” he said.

Most Japanese support some revision to the constitution. But the country is sharply divided on how far to deviate from official pacifism.

“As a group of people who have experienced an atomic bombing, it’s impossible for us to think of protecting the country with nuclear arms,” said Terumi Tanaka, the secretary general of Hidankyo, a group of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing survivors.

Tanaka was 13 when he experienced the attack in Nagasaki.

“We have urged the world’s nuclear powers to abandon atomic weapons,” he said. “It’s such a disappointment if the North really has nuclear arms now.

“But what would keep them from using atomic arms is not Japan’s nuclearization,” he added, stressing the significance of diplomacy.

Senior ruling party politician Koichi Kato, considered a leading moderate, voiced concern that hawks would now push for Japan to go nuclear.—AFP