Executive Summary 

Japan’s intelligence reform,* planned for July 2026, is designed to centralise intelligence collection and strengthen anti-espionage measures amid rising regional tensions and Tokyo’s desire to enhance alliance cooperation. These measures address existing structural challenges to information sharing, seek to enhance intelligence training, and tackle foreign espionage that limit the reliability of Japan’s intelligence community today. Japan’s ambitions to achieve strategic autonomy and strengthen alliance cooperation come at a time of heightened threats from neighboring countries such as Russia, China, and North Korea. Though Tokyo’s intelligence reform will render cooperation more appealing to allies, concerns of civil rights infringements and recent memory of reform failures from the Abe administration remain firmly in the minds of many observers. 

*The Japanese Government, recently formed by a coalition between the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Japan Innovation party (Nippon Ishin) under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, plans to establish a national intelligence bureau in 2026. The proposed plan concerns the following measures: 

• Upgrading the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office (CIRO) and the Director of Cabinet Intelligence (DCI) to the “National Intelligence Agency” and “Secretary General of the National Intelligence Agency” to establish parity with the National Security Secretariat (NSS) and its Secretary General; 
• Replace the Cabinet Intelligence Council with a new “National Intelligence Council”;
• Establish an External Intelligence Agency by the end of the tax year, 2027;
• Create an organisation to train intelligence officers;
• Review and establish new anti-espionage legislation. [source, source]