The 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki provided an important milestone in the study of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, both to understand the history of the atomic age, and to shape its future. 

CNS's Masako Toki published an insightful editorial on the role that Japan can and should play to strengthen the international disarmament regime. As the country of "hibakusha"-- atomic bomb survivors-- as well as its unique, geopolitical role in the world, "Japan must take a bolder step," she writes for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: "Efforts toward a world without nuclear weapons need to be multifaceted-- which Japan knows better than many countries." 

Writing from Hiroshima for Foreign Policy, East Asia Program Director Jeffrey Lewis published a thoughtful commentary on "the real power of Hiroshima," on the ways in which the August 6, 1945, bombing sparked the creation of a slow, contested norm that posits nuclear weapons "as the ultimate expression of material and spiritual evil of total war." He goes on to explore the implication, evolution, and debates surrounding this norm, that any student, scholar, or practitioner charged with understanding our current-day nonproliferation regime should read.