How 40 years of failed intelligence reform finally succeeded

The reform looks modest, but its true achievement was designing a law the public was willing to accept.

Agustin Maciel-Padilla

14 October 20264 min read

For four decades, Japanese governments have tried to fix their intelligence system and failed. In 1985, an anti-espionage bill that carried the death penalty was unsuccessful. Every opposition party, the press, the bar, and adversaries within the ruling party opposed it (Opens in new window). In 2005, a plan for a British-style foreign intelligence service disappeared amid inter-bureaucratic conflict between ministries. In 2007, a legislative initiative for a national security council died without a single committee hearing (Opens in new window).

Then, in May 2026, the Diet created a National Intelligence Council chaired by the prime minister. It also turned the Cabinet’s small intelligence office into a National Intelligence Bureau with about 730 staff. The upper house approved this legislation (Opens in new window) with 187 votes against 58, and more than a third of the approval votes (Opens in new window) came from outside the governing coalition. This is the biggest reconstruction of Japanese intelligence since 1945, and it passed with barely a protest.

Why did it work this time? The obvious answers aren’t enough. Threats from China and North Korea were already present throughout the 2010s. Moreover, then prime minister Shinzo Abe wanted the same reform and controlled the same factors of power, yet he never achieved it.

The better answer is less spectacular but more useful: Japan’s reform succeeded because of what it left out.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has called this a first step (MEAphotogallery/Flickr)

Scholars of the Copenhagen School argue (Opens in new window) that security policy is made through “securitisation”. A leader declares something an existential threat, an audience accepts the claim, and measures that would be unacceptable under normal conditions become possible. Later work added a key refinement: audiences can accept that a threat is real and still reject the proposed solution. Japan shows what follows from that. When a government cannot count on its audience, it designs the remedy to fit what the audience will tolerate. The design is not a byproduct of persuasion. It is persuasion itself.

Two choices made the difference. The first was the framing. In 1985, and again with the 2013 state secrets law, the government stated it was protecting the state and its secrets. That set security on a collision course with civil liberties, and critics either won the argument or fought it to a costly draw.

In 2026, the government named something else to protect: democracy itself. A senior official told the Diet (Opens in new window) that foreign influence operations and disinformation threaten “the very foundations of democracy, such as fair elections and a free press”. This turned the civil-liberties critique on its head. A stronger intelligence system now appears to defend freedom rather than threaten it.

The second was restraint. The new law creates no new crimes, no foreign spy service and no new surveillance powers over citizens. It changes how existing agencies share information and lets the prime minister set national intelligence priorities. Officials repeatedly said (Opens in new window) that the law “contains no provisions on powers that directly affect citizens’ rights”. The coalition had also promised an anti-espionage law, but the government quietly kept it separate. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called (Opens in new window) the act just “the first step”.

Japan’s reform succeeded because of what it left out.

Politics opened the door. In October 2025, Komeito left the ruling coalition. It had been the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) partner for 26 years and a reliable wall on security legislation. Four months later, the LDP won a two-thirds majority in the lower house on its own, enough to override the upper house. Opposition parties – who could still delay the bill but no longer block it – chose to bargain instead. They traded their votes for on-the-record promises that the new bodies would not monitor protesters or interfere in elections. The national bar federation had passed a formal resolution against the 1985 bill. This time it asked for oversight, not repeal, even though one poll (Opens in new window) showed 86.5% of respondents were concerned about the possibility of abuse of power.

This is the larger lesson. Amy Zegart’s book (Opens in new window)Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC showed that US national security agencies were weakened from birth by bureaucratic bargains. Japan’s new bureau is the mirror image: it succeeded by design. Its architects understood that in a democracy suspicious of its own past, the way to build capability is to do it in stages. Pass the least contested piece first, present it as a defence of democracy, and let earlier reforms make the change look like an upgrade rather than a break with the past.

But doing it in stages has a price, and Japan has not paid it yet. The opposition won promises, not institutions. A proposal for an independent audit body was voted down. Japan still has no parliamentary committee dedicated to overseeing intelligence activities. And the ministers who will commission intelligence are almost the same ones who make policy. These risks are manageable today because the bureau’s powers are modest.

They will not stay modest. The government’s next steps include a counter-espionage law, a foreign agents registry and an overseas intelligence service by the end of fiscal 2027. None of these can be described as mere coordination, and each affects civil liberties directly. The strategy that carried the first step will be much harder to repeat.

The test for Tokyo now is whether oversight grows as fast as capability. A dedicated Diet committee with vetted staff, regular public reporting and an independent inspector general would cost the government little. They would also give the next reforms what the first one only borrowed: public trust. Japan has shown how a cautious democracy can strengthen its intelligence system. It has not yet shown that it can hold one accountable.

About the author

Agustin Maciel-Padilla

Dr Agustin Maciel-Padilla is an Assistant Professor at Rabdan Academy, Abu Dhabi. He has extensive experience both in academia and public service in the field of security studies and intelligence.

Topics

Intelligence & security Japan Government & politics