During a parliamentary session on November 26, 2025, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said that her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government would soon consider new legislation on “spy prevention.” Takaichi’s pledge to “speedily draft” such a law and her party’s past legislative efforts raise serious concerns that the new legislation would endanger free speech rights, media freedom, and the protection of whistleblowers.
The LDP had introduced anti-espionage legislation in 1985 titled “Preventing Espionage and Other Acts Concerning State Secrets.” It was eventually dropped after strong resistance, including by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, which criticized the bill’s broad definition of “state secrets” and other terminology, as well as permitting the death penalty.
In 2013, Japan’s LDP government adopted the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, which reclassified as “special secrets” information for which “leaks can cause a serious obstacle to national security” in the categories of defense, diplomacy, and so-called “harmful activities” and “terrorism.” That legislation also increased the penalties for releasing such secrets.
Proponents of new anti-spying legislation claim the 2013 law is insufficient for preventing and punishing spies. Takaichi’s recent announcement comes amid the LDP’s increased cooperation with conservative opposition parties to revive anti-espionage efforts. An October coalition agreement with the Japan Innovation Party pledged “spy prevention” legislation, while opposition parties Sanseito and the Democratic Party for the People also submitted anti-spying bills in late November.
If the Japanese government decides to enact a new espionage law, it should ensure it is consistent with international law, notably the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The United Nations Human Rights Committee has stated that restrictions on freedom of expression must be necessary for a legitimate purpose and not be overbroad. Governments need to take “[e]xtreme care” to ensure that laws relating to national security are crafted and applied in a manner that conforms to the ICCPR’s strict requirements. It is contrary to the ICCPR “to invoke such laws to suppress or withhold from the public information of legitimate public interest that does not harm national security or to prosecute journalists, … human rights defenders, or others, for having disseminated such information.”.
In any proposed law, those who collect information in the public interest, including whistleblowers, journalists, academics, activists, and independent observers, need to be explicitly protected.
