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A closer look at Japan’s newly launched ‘spy bureau,’ a signal of its growing militarist ambitions_我的网站

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People hold placards reading "No war" and "Stop constitutional revision, military expansion" during a rally in Tokyo, Japan on May 3, 2026.
As an old saying in both Chinese and Japanese goes, "Bad deeds travel a thousand miles." This means that wrongdoing will eventually spread far and wide, becoming known to all.
Ignoring strong opposition at home and abroad, the Japanese government has officially inaugurated the "National Intelligence Bureau." Dubbed by some Japanese media outlets and opinion leaders as a postwar institution close to the "Tokko", or Special Higher Police - which targeted critics of the Japanese government ahead of World War II (WWII) - the new bureau has been met with widespread criticism and protests ever since its establishment on July 31.
What exactly is Japan's "National Intelligence Bureau"? What is the background of its organizational structure and leadership? What impact could its deep entanglement with US intelligence agencies have on regional security? And what strategic ambitions of the Japanese authorities lie behind its creation? In this story, the Global Times takes a closer look at this newly established intelligence agency and examines the dangerous attempts by Japan's right-wing forces to break free from the postwar order and revive a militarist path.
Striking a historical nerve
On July 31, Japan held the first meeting of its new National Intelligence Council chaired by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, and launched its secretariat, the National Intelligence Bureau, reported The Mainichi on the same day.
Although the full details have not been made public, the meeting was believed to have confirmed plans to draw up the first-ever strategy to guide intelligence-gathering and analysis activities, as well as to move forward with consideration of a "anti-espionage" bill aimed at countering covert operations by foreign powers, NHK reported the same day.
The bureau's launch date has struck a historical nerve in some Asian countries, victims of Japanese aggression during WWII.
Hiroshi Onishi, vice president of the Japan-China Friendship Association, told the Global Times that Japan's decision to establish the body on July 31 is a date that evokes memories of the notorious Unit 731 bacterial warfare squad of imperialist Japan, and is bound to remind people in China and other Asian countries of that dark history.
The Japanese government should consider how this timing may be perceived by people in other countries, especially in China, he said.
Under a law to establish the National Intelligence Council, passed by the Japanese Diet in May 2026, Japan is building a new intelligence system centered on its National Intelligence Bureau.
According to a July 31 story by the Xinhua News Agency, the bureau, which integrates intelligence functions from Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Justice and the National Police Agency, had been described by the public as the "command center" of intelligence operations.
Why did Japan establish this bureau? Establishing this bureau enables the Japanese government to "make sound decisions based on higher-quality, timely information amid today's complex and challenging international environment," The Japan Times quoted Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara as saying on July 31.
However, to some Chinese scholars in Japanese studies, explanations like this are little more than a cover for the current right-wing Takaichi administration's real agenda.
"Of course, the Japanese authorities need to put forward some seemingly plausible justification; otherwise, they would have no way to explain it to the public," Da Zhigang, a research fellow at the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies of the Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
Da said that the Takaichi administration's push for the reform of the intelligence system is directly tied to Japan's military expansion, its drive to strengthen military capabilities and constitutional revision.
"The real purpose is still institutional expansion - to make the intelligence system more compatible with, and better serve, the series of military expansion and geopolitical strategies Japan is now advancing," he noted.
Adding uncertainty
The National Intelligence Bureau largely inherits the roughly 730 personnel and functions of its predecessor, the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, with around 30 new posts being authorized to be added, according to The Japan Times.
The bureau reports directly to the Japanese prime minister, and has centralized intelligence functions that were previously dispersed across multiple ministries and agencies under Japan's cabinet office, which overturns Japan's postwar decentralized intelligence architecture, Da said.
"Compared with the system of mutual checks and constraints designed under Japan's pacifist constitution after the WWII, the country's current intelligence apparatus is highly centralized," Da told the Global Times. "Constraints that were once built into the Japanese constitution, which has set forth pacifism, now seem to be gone."
If the bureau is a new engine of centralization in Japan's intelligence system, then Kazuya Hara can be called the engine's first operator. According to media reports, Hara, the bureau's first director, joined Japan's National Police Agency in 1990, and had also served at Japan's embassies in Russia and the US. In 2019, Hara became executive secretary to the then prime minister Shinzo Abe, and in 2023 he began serving as director of Japan's cabinet intelligence.
A visitor tours a specialized exhibition about the trial of Japanese war criminals by New China, at the Exhibition Hall of Evidences of Crime Committed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army, which was held in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, on July 1, 2026.
Photos: VCG

A visitor tours a specialized exhibition about the trial of Japanese war criminals by New China, at the Exhibition Hall of Evidences of Crime Committed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army, which was held in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, on July 1, 2026. Photos: VCG
In May, shortly after the legislation was passed, Hara reportedly made a special trip to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters. FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on X that Japan's initiative would "greatly enhance our shared partnership," and said he looks "forward to fully supporting them and working with them on cybersecurity, counterintelligence, espionage and counterterrorism to strengthen our cooperation," Japan's Jiji Press reported on May 8.
Moreover, according to a July 13 report by The New York Times, during the process of setting up the bureau, Japan had "privately approached partners such as the United States, Australia and Germany in recent months for advice on technology, staffing and priorities."
"Intelligence officials from the United States, Japan's main security ally, have offered input on cyberdefense systems and methods of countering industrial espionage, according to two people familiar with the conversations," the NYT report said.
A tightly bound intelligence alliance is adding multiple layers of uncertainty to the security landscape in Northeast Asia. Da said that the bureau's establishment would amplify Japan's intelligence-driven disruptive power in bilateral and multilateral geopolitical interactions in Northeast Asia, while its deep entanglement with intelligence networks beyond the region could further intensify the compound shock to the regional security order.
"For countries around Northeast Asia, the costs of social contact and other forms of interaction will rise," Da said.
The establishment and operational launch of a brand-new intelligence agency means that Japan is already making advance intelligence preparations for a potential war, Lü Yaodong, a research fellow from the Institute of Japanese Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
East Asian countries, as well as all peace-loving forces around the world committed to safeguarding global peace, must remain highly vigilant, Lü said.
Accelerating Japan's remilitarization agenda
China has a time-honored saying: "Those who persist in wrongdoing will bring destruction upon themselves."
Less than two weeks after its launch, Japan's National Intelligence Bureau has already come under broad criticism. What it has triggered is not only questions about the functions of a new agency, but also deep concern over whether Japan is drifting away from its postwar path of peace and back toward militarism.
One major criticism is that the intelligence power in Japan has become overly concentrated, while checks and balances remain inadequate. The law to create the National Intelligence Council, which governs the bureau, "does not include any mechanism to oversee the activities of intelligence agencies" despite concerns, as reported in a May 29 editorial piece by The Mainichi.
For many people in Japan, another concern is that the new intelligence agency lacks institutional safeguards to protect citizens' rights. On May 27, the day Japan's Upper House passed the law, large numbers of people reportedly spontaneously gathered outside Japan's Diet, holding banners reading "Stop revising the constitution and expanding the military" and "Oppose the National Intelligence Bureau bill that will monitor citizens."
It is completely unfeasible for Japan to set up an intelligence agency detached from corresponding restraints, said Makoto Ito, a Japanese lawyer and the director of the Japan Institute of Constitutional Law.
If the bureau and related measures such as the proposed anti-espionage law are allowed to push forward on their own, outside a democratic oversight framework, the risks will only be magnified, Ito told the Global Times.
More concerning still, some observers pointed out that the establishment of the National Intelligence Bureau is not an isolated move, but a key link in the Takaichi administration's systematic effort to break free from the postwar order and push Japan further down a path of rearmament.
Japan is strengthening intelligence centralization through the creation of the bureau, while also accelerating the deployment of Tomahawk cruise missiles and conducting live-fire drills, said Lü. This indicates that Japan is advancing its military expansion strategy on two fronts at once: intelligence gathering and actual combat strike capability. He criticized these moves as not only a serious shock to the regional security landscape, but also an open challenge to the international order of peace.
The Takaichi administration is devoting energy to intelligence-system reform precisely when the public urgently needs relief from persistent inflation and a rising cost of living, and that these reforms directly serve Japan's military expansion, force buildup, constitutional revision and even efforts to undermine the country's Three Non-Nuclear Principles, said Da.
"In fact, this also shows that Japan's right wing has now reached a stage where it simply no longer cares about people's livelihoods," he said.
The establishment of Japan's National Intelligence Bureau is "another negative development in Japan's domestic and international policies on security," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on July 31, the bureau's launch date.
"For some time, Japan has been accelerating its remilitarization agenda under the pretext of national security and external threat. Such moves have put the regional peace and stability at risk and drawn widespread concern across the international community," Mao warned.
"Those running the Japanese government need to learn lessons from history and act prudently," she noted.
。文 |地缘历史档案 编辑 |地缘历史档案[微风] 当地时间8月23日，中埃“文明之鹰-2026”空军联合训练迎来了首个飞行训练日。中国空军的歼-16重型战斗机与埃及空军的法制“阵风”战机在埃及空域展开了1对1与2对2的基础性空战对抗。中方飞行员在接受采访时提到，埃方飞行员训练作风严谨、配合默契、技战术素养过硬。这番评价听起来客观得体，但大家千万别只把它当成一句普通的交流客套。这场对抗的核心看点，是中国空军第一次在境外真实的对抗环境中，与西方现役主流的“阵风”战斗机正面对决。 1、第一次正面交手，攒下的是拿钱买不到的真数据在以往，我们对西方四代半战机的了解，大多停留在手册参数和模拟器推演上。埃及空军装备的这批“阵风”属于F3标准，配备的是RBE2无源相控阵雷达，虽然综合探测能力相比有源相控阵雷达有所限制，但它的飞行机动和多任务能力依然十分出色。能在贴近实战的真实对抗中，直接采集到“阵风”战机的 雷达反射特征、机动包线以及电子战响应模式，这种机会可遇不可求。歼-16飞行员这次在几千公里之外拿到的，不是死板的理论数值，而是真实对手在真实电磁环境下飞出来的轨迹。这些核心数据，在家里练一百遍也模拟不出来。 2、阵容全面升级，展示的是完整的空战体系对比去年的参演阵容，就能看出中国空军这次练兵的思路变了。在“文明之鹰-2025”联合训练中，中方派出的编队主要是歼-10C、空警-500以及运油-20。而到了今年，中方直接把阵容升级为 歼-16战斗机、空警-500预警机、运-9电子战飞机以及直-20搜救直升机。

B | 把运-9电子战飞机拉到境外参演，说明今年的训练重点不再是切磋单机动作，而是 聚焦于复杂电磁条件下的体系化制空作战。

C | 从去年的侧重基础空战，扩展到今年的空战战术、制空作战、战斗搜救和兵力运用全科目，中方实际上在境外组建了一套从预警、电子干扰、重型打击到后勤搜救的全要素作战网络。

D | 演练的本质，已经演变为展示如何依靠这套网络吃透空战全程。 3、戳破西方装备神话，看清“买得起玩不起”的硬伤如果我们把视角放大到中东空域，就会发现埃及空军的装备构成非常有代表性。埃方手里拥有43架法制“阵风”战机和200多架美制F-16。看似阵容豪华，但使用起来却处处受制于人。比如美制F-16被美方戴上了“紧箍咒”，根本无法获得超视距导弹和完整的电子战能力支持；而“阵风”战机单机性能虽然优秀，在缺乏整体电磁与预警体系支撑的情况下，战斗力也会大打折扣。 买得起高端装备，却买不到全套战力，这是很多非西方大国空军共同面临的困境。 中国空军这次把预警机、电子战飞机和重型战斗机组合在一起拉到埃及，其实是给所有关注中东局势的国家做了一次现场演示。

E | 对于那些买不起或者买不到五代机的国家来说，靠单机硬拼走不通，但依靠一套自主可控的空中体系，同样能打出代差优势。

F | 4、军贸订单是打出来的，实战演示比PPT管用百倍中方飞行员对埃方飞行员的认可，深层原因在于双方进行了高强度的真实对抗，并且切切实实拿到了珍贵的对抗数据。更深层的逻辑在于， 军贸订单从来都是打出来的，而不是在谈判桌上谈出来的。很多西方装备买家在被强权限制弹药和软件功能后，早就在寻找新的出路。