Japan’s establishment of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) marks a historically significant shift for its national security architecture. The new bodies offer potentially improved coordination among government agencies, reduced duplication of effort and more comprehensive assessments for policymakers. However, Japan’s pre-war intelligence organisations offer cautionary examples regarding the need to maintain strong safeguards against political instrumentalisation and appropriate selectivity in terms of capabilities.

Japan’s establishment of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) on 31 July 2026 marks a historically significant shift for its national security architecture. The two new bodies were formed pursuant to the passage of the National Intelligence Council Establishment Act of 2026, a long-declared objective of the Liberal Democratic Party under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.[i] The fulfilment of the LDP’s promise represents the most substantial centralisation of Japan’s intelligence apparatus since the end of the Second World War, and a continuation (after an enforced pause) of Japan’s history of intelligence collection. Yet this history, implicated as it is with memories of wartime excess and foreign aggression, also offers a cautionary note to the future evolution of post-war Japan’s intelligence community.

Pre-1945 History of Japanese Intelligence

Japan is well-known as being the home of the semi-legendary ninja, black-clad assassins proficient in martial arts and deadly weapons who served feudal lords in early modern Japan and maintained professional rivalries with the more chivalrous samurai. Though this image is largely the product of modern mass media, the historical ninja (written in Japanese with characters meaning ‘those who hide or sneak in’) were in truth employed as clandestine operatives proficient in gaining and then subverting the trust of their targets through a variety of stratagems to extract information and conduct surveillance. In brief, they were spies, not assassins.[ii]

After Japan emerged as a modern state in the Meiji era, their roles were inherited by a set of institutions devised to protect the new regime from catastrophic outside intervention as well as internal rebellion. These institutions mainly emerged from the military structure, with the Imperial Japanese Army in particular playing a key role. Still, the powerful Home Ministry also had a parallel set of organisations. Two of these in particular are worth paying attention to for the legacy they have left behind: the Kempeitai (憲兵隊, ‘Soldiers of the Law’) and the Tokko (an abbreviation of 特別高等警察, ‘Special Higher Police’).[iii]

The Kempeitai, a mixture of secret policemen and intelligence operators, were first established in 1881 as a military police corps. However, they soon added a host of clandestine operations capabilities to their repertoire as Japan increasingly sought empire abroad.[iv] Explicitly conceived of as a group of soldiers loyal only to their military superiors (and through them to the Emperor), the Kempeitai gradually came to be seen as the dealing hand of the unsavoury parts of Japanese colonial policy. Their involvement in the torture and liquidation of independence activists in Korea and other areas, as well as their atrocities in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), served as the backdrop to their deployment during the Second World War to Japan’s newly-occupied Southeast Asian territories, where they came to achieve the apex of their infamy.

The Tokko, a later invention, had a different objective.[v] Founded in 1911 by the Home Ministry, it was mainly conceived as a counter-intelligence and public security body. However, it eventually began to enforce thought control as part of the march towards greater militarism. Composed of six departments, the Tokko took care of activities as diverse as censorship and surveillance of foreigners in Japan, and often relied on surprise raids, prolonged warrantless detention and coerced confessions to deter activities deemed undesirable by the state.

The Post-war Interval in Japanese Intelligence

After its surrender on 15 August 1945, the United States of America (US)-led Occupation took over all governmental functions in Japan, with a view to achieving the ‘3D’ policy of democratisation, demilitarisation and decentralisation. The Tokko fell afoul of democratisation and decentralisation, while the hated Kempeitai was targeted as part of its demilitarisation policy. Both organisations were disbanded, and several of their members were prosecuted criminally. As the Americans drafted the 1947 Constitution (that remains in effect today), they inserted........

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