Japanese parliament enacts law to establish national intelligence council amid public concern

TOKYO - The Japanese parliament enacted a law on Wednesday to establish a national intelligence council.

The legislation came as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi aims to centralize and strengthen the country's intelligence capabilities.

The Japanese government plans to establish an intelligence system centered on a national intelligence council, with a national intelligence bureau serving as its operational arm, consolidating the country's fragmented intelligence functions under a unified command.

According to the new law, the national intelligence council will be chaired by the prime minister and composed of relevant cabinet members, including the chief cabinet secretary and foreign minister.

The national intelligence bureau, the council's secretariat, will comprehensively coordinate intelligence work across government ministries and agencies.

Kyodo News said the new law lacks provisions for parliament to monitor intelligence activities, leaving questions regarding democratic oversight unresolved.

The government could establish the council and bureau as early as July, according to local media.

The legislation, which cleared the House of Councillors on Wednesday and the House of Representatives in April, has continued to draw widespread concern across Japanese society.

Protests against the legislation have been staged repeatedly in Tokyo, including one on Tuesday.

Japanese military journalist and former Self-Defense Forces officer Makoto Konishi told Xinhua that one of the driving purposes behind the government's push for a new intelligence apparatus is to suppress voices calling for peace and opposing war.

Atsushi Koketsu, a visiting researcher at Meiji University in Japan, told Xinhua that the new intelligence system could subject civilian exchanges between Japan and its neighboring countries to surveillance and restrictions.

The move has also evoked the horrors of the Tokko in Japan. Tokko, short for the Special Higher Police, was a notorious secret police apparatus that crushed dissent and enforced ideological control within Japan before and during World War II.

The Ryukyu Shimpo warned in an earlier editorial that the historical lesson of the military police and Tokko surveilling ordinary citizens and cracking down on anti-war voices must never be forgotten.