TOKYO - Nihon Hidankyo, Japan's leading atomic bomb survivors group, on Thursday issued a statement slamming Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's attempt to revise the country's long-held Three Non-Nuclear Principles, local media reported.

Nihon Hidankyo, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 for their efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, said in the statement that it "strongly protests overturning" Japan's long-held position of not possessing, not producing and not permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japanese territory, and the current administration's considering a review of the principles, Kyodo News reported.

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The group stressed that steps to abolish nuclear weapons must not be delayed, adding atomic bomb survivors "cannot allow nuclear arms to be brought into Japan or let the country become a base for nuclear war or a target of nuclear attacks."

The group urged the government to uphold the Three Non-Nuclear Principles and put them into law via the statement sent to Takaichi.

The Three Non-Nuclear Principles were first declared in the Diet, Japan's parliament, by then Japanese prime minister Eisaku Sato in 1967 and viewed as a national credo. The National Security Strategy, one of the three security documents approved by the Cabinet in 2022, states, "The basic policy of adhering to the Three Non-Nuclear Principles will remain unchanged in the future."

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Kyodo News recently quoted government sources as saying that as her government gears up to revise the country's key national security documents by the end of 2026, Takaichi was considering reviewing the third of The Three Non-Nuclear Principles, which prohibits nuclear weapons from entering Japan's territory, raising strong doubts and concerns at home.