There is no country on Earth more committed to global nuclear disarmament than Japan. Ever since experiencing firsthand the horrors of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese government and people have been steadfast in calling for the total elimination of nuclear weapons from the planet.

Japanese were among the first and loudest to applaud a few years back when a group of senior American statesmen — former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and former Senator Sam Nunn; since dubbed the "four horsemen" — called for the United States to start honoring its nuclear disarmament commitment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

While their pleas largely fell on deaf ears during the Bush administration, others found it hard to ignore the call by four confirmed cold warriors who were all seen as hawkish on defense and security issues. All are hard-nosed realists who argued that America was safer in a word without nuclear weapons and that it was important that the U.S. be seen as leading the world in this direction, rather than ignoring or, at best, merely playing lip service to such calls.