Nagasaki marked the 81st anniversary of the US atomic bombing on Sunday, with Mayor Shiro Suzuki calling nuclear weapons an "absolute evil" and warning that growing reliance on nuclear deterrence only increases the risk of nuclear war. The commemoration comes as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's government revises Japan's defence policy to strengthen its military's offensive capability, fuelling speculation that she could allow nuclear weapons onto Japanese soil, in tension with the country's postwar non-nuclear principles.

The US bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 killed around 70,000 people by the end of that year, three days after the Hiroshima bombing killed 140,000; Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945, ending the Second World War. Representatives from more than 90 countries attended Sunday's ceremony at Nagasaki's Peace Park, observing a moment of silence at 11:02am, the time the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb was dropped. Suzuki urged Tokyo to uphold the pacifist constitution, attend this year's Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons review conference, and maintain all three non-nuclear principles, while Takaichi, who attended the ceremony, stayed vague on the principles and did not mention the treaty, which Japan has not signed as it relies on the US nuclear umbrella.