JAPAN IS BUILDING ITS FIRST SPY AGENCY SINCE WWII AND THE IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER IS REPORTEDLY LAUGHING IN HIS GRAVE
Japan is finally getting a centralised intelligence agency. Eighty years late. Four billion dollars lighter. And asking America, Australia and Germany for help like a student who forgot to do the homework.
The National Intelligence Bureau will coordinate 33,000 personnel across police, defence and foreign ministries. It will have a $407 million budget. It will be operational by December. And it will be headed by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi herself.
Japan has been a spy’s paradise since 1945. Russia’s GRU ran front companies in Tokyo to smuggle sanctioned technology. China created fake Japanese news sites to spread propaganda. Everyone was welcome. No questions asked.
Now Japan wants to be serious. The Cabinet Intelligence Research Office is being replaced with a National Intelligence Council and a National Intelligence Bureau. A counter-espionage law is coming. A foreign intelligence agency is being planned.
The Iranians are watching and they are confused.
Iran has been running a sophisticated intelligence network for decades. It has operatives in multiple countries. It has a Supreme Leader who was just killed and replaced. It has a nuclear program that the world cannot stop.
Japan is asking America how to set up a spy agency.
The difference is not capability. It is will. Iran built its intelligence apparatus while under sanctions. Japan is building its while asking permission from its former occupier.
What about the Emperor? The Imperial Household Agency protects him. It is not intelligence. It is protocol. Bodyguards with swords and tradition. The Emperor does not need spies. He needs ritual..
And the yakuza? Still there. Still operating. Still more organised than Japan’s intelligence community has been for eight decades.
The Islamic Republic of Japan does not exist. But if it did, it would have built this agency in 1979, not 2026.