By Zhong Sheng, People’s Daily
Recently, Japan’s House of Councillors passed a bill to establish a so-called national intelligence committee, a key initiative championed by the administration of Sanae Takaichi, amid considerable controversy.
While Japan has portrayed the reform of its intelligence apparatus as a routine adjustment designed to address a more complex security environment, a closer look beyond the official rhetoric reveals that this institutional restructuring is far more than a simple administrative reorganization.
Rather, it represents a major step in tighter domestic social control, eroding the postwar security framework, and accelerating military expansion, exposing the increasingly pronounced militarist ambitions of Japan’s right-wing forces. Countries across Asia and the international community must remain highly vigilant.
At the core of the legislation is the creation of a highly centralized intelligence system under the direct control of the Prime Minister’s Office. The new framework is designed to break down bureaucratic barriers, consolidate intelligence resources across government agencies, and significantly expand the authority of intelligence bodies to coordinate and deploy information.
Critically, the legislation deliberately blurs the legal limits on state power. It fails to clearly defines the lawful intelligence collection boundaries, offers weak protections for citizens’ personal information. Nor does it provide robust accountability mechanisms for unauthorized surveillance or abuse of authority.
Even more concerning, the entire system lacks meaningful checks and balances, including parliamentary oversight and independent third-party supervision, creating a regulatory vacuum around intelligence power.
As a result, vast amounts of sensitive information, including government data, citizens’ personal movements, and classified information related to Japan’s Self-Defense Forces, could be accessed and repurposed across agencies with little effective restraint.
This unchecked concentration of intelligence power has fueled growing concerns within Japanese society about the possible return of “secret-police rule.”
History offers clear warning for these worries. Throughout modern history, Japan’s extended intelligence capabilities have often aligned with external aggression and military adventurism. Intelligence operations and espionage have long served as the opening tool for Japan’s expansionist ambitions.
From the First Sino-Japanese War to World War II, Japanese intelligence agencies served as the vanguard of carefully planned military campaigns, paving the way for aggression against other nations.
During World War II, the notorious Special Higher Police, relied on a highly centralized intelligence system to impose strict social control, monitoring citizens, suppressing anti-war movements, and silencing dissenting voices. In doing so, it mobilized society in service of militarist expansion abroad, bringing profound suffering to the Japanese people while leaving deep and lasting scars across Asia.
Today, by disregarding historical lessons, weakening oversight of intelligence activities, expanding surveillance powers, and tightening social control, Japan is increasingly being criticized as reverting, in a different form, to methods associated with an earlier era.
Many observers argue that these developments provide institutional tools for right-wing forces to suppress voices advocating peace and to marginalize opposing viewpoints.
This law is also not an isolated policy change. It constitutes a core piece of Japan’s broader effort to reconstruct its national security architecture.
As right-wing attempts to cast off the constraints imposed by the postwar international order, consolidated, centralized intelligence functions will enable further hawkish security shifts, greater military expansion, and expanded external military intervention. The long-term regional risks are substantial.
According to the Japanese government’s roadmap, the new intelligence framework is scheduled to become operational in July this year. Additional measures are expected to follow, including legislation aimed at preventing espionage, a foreign-agent registration system, and the establishment of a dedicated external intelligence agency. Together, these initiatives are rapidly forming an all-encompassing intelligence and surveillance network.
Under this framework, anti-war demonstrations, legitimate public scrutiny of government conduct, and even friendly people-to-people exchanges across borders could potentially be labeled as national security threats.
As Japan’s intelligence system increasingly shifts toward serving external strategic ambitions and moves further away from a path of peaceful development, concerns are continuing to grow both within Japan and throughout the international community.
Some Japanese experts have warned that the new system could stretch the definition of “national security,” laying institutional groundwork for full wartime preparedness.
On the day the legislation passed, large public protests gathered outside Japan’s National Diet Building in Tokyo, where citizens gathered to voice their opposition. Their demonstrations reflected genuine public unease and resistance, underscoring the perception that this aggressive security reform runs counter to public sentiment and lacks public support.
Since taking office, the Takaichi administration has steadily pushed Japan toward renewed remilitarization.
From deploying missiles with so-called “counterstrike capabilities,” to sending large numbers of combat personnel to participate in joint military exercises, to approving the export of lethal weapons through cabinet decisions, a series of troubling developments has already exposed the gap between Japan’s self-proclaimed image as a “pacifist nation” committed to an “exclusively defense-oriented policy” and its actual trajectory.
By once again strengthening and expanding the powers of intelligence agencies, the Takaichi administration is reviving a historical script that raises serious concerns and accelerating a dangerous trend that could make Japan a source of instability in East Asia. Countries in the region must remain highly alert. Japan must immediately cease all actions that undermine regional peace and stability and genuinely return to the right path of peaceful development.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy and international affairs.)
Japan’s intelligence overhaul pushes it closer to becoming source of East Asian instability
