ADRIAN MA, HOST:
Spying and intelligence-gathering - almost every country does it in some form. And among the world's most powerful countries, there's often a large and mysterious three-letter agency behind these efforts. The U.S. has the CIA. Russia has the FSB, formerly the KGB. In Japan, it's TBD, as in to be determined, because it actually does not have a central spy agency and hasn't had one since World War II. But Japan's prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, is trying to change that and build up the country's defense and intelligence capabilities in the face of increasing threats from Russia, China and North Korea.
Richard Samuels keeps a close eye on Japanese intelligence. He's a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of "Special Duty: A History Of The Japanese Intelligence Community." Richard Samuels, thanks for being here.
RICHARD SAMUELS: My pleasure.
MA: Japan has gone through decades without a centralized intelligence agency. Can you briefly tell us about the history here? Like, why did Japan end up without a central spy agency? And why has it stayed that way for so long?
SAMUELS: You know, one legacy of the Pacific War was that debate about intelligence, especially about counterintelligence - became so politically sensitive after the war, and it was - even discussion of it was often avoided. A lot of Japanese voters feared that the government would somehow hit a slippery slope and slide back into excessive domestic surveillance and control. There was a living memory of the military government, and it was not a pleasant one for the consequences that they had led Japan into. So as a result, you know, Japan spent decades punching below its weight in the intelligence arena. You know, during the Cold War, it was sometimes described - not unfairly - as a spy heaven or spy paradise. The Soviet KGB had very little difficulty cultivating Japanese politicians and journalists and academics and service members.
And, you know, we're still reading accounts of this in the press just this week. But as Japan's security environment deteriorated after the turn of the century, policymakers began to identify deficiencies and began addressing them. And so, today, Japan is on the track to possessing capable civilian and military intelligence organizations. And its central coordinating institution will be acquiring, as they are stood up, much greater authority and far more resources than they've had in the past.
MA: In lieu of having a kind of large entity coordinating intelligence gathering, how does Japan collect intelligence?
SAMUELS: This is the problem for Japan, that there are multiple intelligence agencies. Now, in the Japanese case, there wasn't a central one that was able to order the sharing of information, like the Directorate of National Intelligence, for example, in the United States. But what they had was what every country has, which is a problem of competing silos, competing units of intelligence in which they're trained not to share, and so they don't share. And so sometimes they get wires crossed and so forth. And fixing that is part of what this reform is all about.
MA: From Japan's point of view, what are the intelligence threats that it is most concerned about?
SAMUELS: The real threats to Japan today are - is the shifting balance of power in northeast Asia. This strategic environment in 2026 is not the same as the strategic environment during the Cold War and not during the post-Cold War. It's something quite new. And at the center of it are provocations, provocative behavior by China, vis-a-vis the South China Sea, borders, Taiwan and so forth. And North Korea, which has had nuclear breakout and now is testing its missile capabilities in areas close to Japan.
And the third thing, that isn't getting much attention because relations are nominally so good between Japan and the United States, is that there's a concern by many in Japan that the United States is less reliable than it used to be. They watched how the United States abandoned Afghanistan in 2021. Six months later, they watched the United States dither about how to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The headlines in Japan were all about, is Taiwan next? What country closer to Japan will the United States abandon? That kind of discourse was something that broke into the open, and Japan has responded to it by diversifying its relationships, deepening its relationships with the United States, but diversifying its dependencies.
MA: I got to ask. According to The New York Times, the United States and other Japanese allies, they're helping informing this agency. What's the nature of Japan's intelligence-sharing with the U.S. and how they're cooperating?
SAMUELS: The nature of that cooperation is bilateral - U.S. and Japan. It tends to be bilateral for the Japanese. The problem has been, from the American perspective, that Japan lacks some of the institutional habits. You know, its security clearances remain less deeply embedded. They didn't have security clearances until 2013. And the challenge is not necessarily one, you know, of personal trustworthiness, but of building durable institutions that are capable of sustaining professional standards across successive governments. And that's what I think they're up to.
As I say, the intelligence reforms matter because they reflect this broader transformation in how Tokyo understands its role in the world. That role in the world has become more ambitious due the extent to which China and North Korea have become more provocative.
MA: Richard Samuels is a professor of political science at MIT. Richard Samuels, thanks again for being here.
SAMUELS: Oh, it's my great pleasure. Thanks so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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