“Biopolitics,” according to Foucault, concerns the natural environment and bodies, both of which are “ungovernable.” Problems with radiation risk are typically problems of governability; radiation can contaminate the whole environment and eventually damage genes and destroy the reproductive capacity of biological bodies. Because radiation can be neither seen nor sensed, problems relating to the so-called “radiation exposure safety level” become political problems concerning the scientific construction of invisible reality and the definition of its meanings for human health. We shed light on the concrete ways in which biopolitics operates in the nuclear age, running from Hiroshima to Chernobyl to Fukushima, with an eye to justice as security for biological bodies. Emphasis is placed on the controversies over so-called depleted uranium (DU) shells.

DU is a radioactive waste generated from the production of enriched uranium, which is necessary for nuclear weapons and energy. In the 1950s, the United States began research on how to dispose DU and developed antitank rounds with DU in their penetrators. DUʼs rare hardness and density are considered “ideal” for destroying tanks. Furthermore, because it is nuclear waste, it is available to the munitions industry at virtually no charge. DU weapons are said to be “revolutionary,” rendering traditional tanks virtually useless. Troublingly, however, DU starts to burn upon impact, dissolving into minute airborne radioactive particles. Once absorbed into the body, some particles remain and irradiate surrounding cells. In Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and other areas where DU rounds have been used in combat or exercises, reports cite alarming increases in cancer, leukemia, and congenital defects among the local population and the soldiers stationed in affected areas. Despite international warnings regarding its toxicity, the DU risk has been denied by its users and WHO as well.

This paper aims to reconsider the significance of the intellectual careers, togetherwith some inherent questions left unresolved, of the three thinkers who played leading roles in the formation of anti-nuclear and pacifist thought, by bringing into relief, from multiple perspectives, the intersections of their visions particularly regarding nuclear issues.

Raichō Hiratsuka, known as a pioneering feminist thinker who inaugurated in 1911 Seitō, the first journal by and for women, was already approaching 60 years old in 1945, but she embraced with enthusiasm the new constitution and led women’s peace movements till she died in 1971. During the war, however, her motherhood-based vision was all but swept away by nationalist rhetoric in the name of women as “national beings,” and she remained silent about these stumbling years.

It was Masao Maruyama, Political thinker, who presented a thorough-going analysis of Japanese totalitarianism immediately; he became famous almost overnight by in his 1946 article, “Logic and Psychology of Utra-Nationalism.” Although many evaluations and critiques have been presented regarding his works, there is one problem Maruyama himself confessed as a most serious omission in his thought; he did not engage with the nuclear question, although he was a hibakusha. Besides some psychological reasons, we suggest his pluralistic pragmatism, which worked well in criticizing totalitarianism, as responsible for such failure.

Hiroshima-based philosopher Ichirō Moritaki had to go through a total soulsearching after undergoing the A-bombing, which deprived him of his right eye. Realizing the need to overcome the “civilization of power,” he began advocating the “civilization of beneficence” and became a committed leader of the antinuclear campaign. However, even for him it took three decades to come to announce “the absolute negation of the nuclear” including power generation. Why? He confessed to having been under a spell of the words of “peaceful use.” But eventually he broke free of it as he became convinced of the “no threshold theory for radiation risk.”