Japan fails to issue comment on Nobel-Winning ICAN

October 7, 2017

TOKYO- The Japanese government has not issued any comment on the winning of this year's Nobel Peace Prize by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, which helped the adoption of a landmark UN nuclear weapons ban treaty in July.

This is apparently because the government takes the position of not supporting the treaty.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday announced ICAN's winning of the prize, praising its "work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons."

Nuclear weapons states and nuclear umbrella states, including Japan, the world's only country attacked with nuclear weapons, have refrained from signing the nuclear ban treaty. The United States dropped an atomic bomb on the western Japan city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and another on the southwestern Japan city of Nagasaki three days later, in the closing days of World War II.

Immediately after the Swedish Academy on Thursday announced its decision to award the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature to Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro, 62, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued a statement saying that there are many fans of Ishiguro's works in Japan and that he would like to celebrate his winning of the award with the fans. Jiji Press