On 6 June 2024, eighty members of the Japanese Diet formally established the Parliamentary League for UAP Clarification from a Security Perspective. The league is bipartisan, spanning the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party), and the Constitutional Democratic Party. It is chaired by Yasukazu Hamada, a former Defence Minister and head of parliamentary affairs for the LDP. Its secretary general is Shinjiro Koizumi, a former Environment Minister widely discussed as a future prime minister. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, himself a former Defence Minister, serves as the league’s supreme adviser.
The league emerged from concerns about unexplained aerial activity in Japanese-controlled airspace. An AARO report designated the region stretching from western Japan to China as a UAP “hotspot” for sightings between 1996 and 2023. In late July 2025, mysterious lights were observed over the Genkai Nuclear Power Station in Saga Prefecture by four security guards; no drone was physically found. The Self-Defence Forces reported multiple instances of “three-coloured objects flying in zigzag patterns then vanishing” near nuclear power plants. Hamada stated: “If we cannot identify what it is, it’s impossible to determine whether the Defence Ministry or the National Police Agency should handle it.”
The Proposal
On 16 May 2025, a delegation led by Hamada visited the Ministry of Defence in Ichigaya, Tokyo, and delivered a formal proposal to Defence Minister Gen Nakatani. The proposal called for the establishment of a Japanese equivalent of America’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, with three core tasks: collecting and analysing UAP-related data, disclosing relevant findings to the public, and reporting investigation results regularly to the National Diet.
Nakatani, himself a founding member of the league, recognised the proposal as “a very important issue” and pledged to “make efforts to meet expectations.” The Defence Ministry side included Vice-Minister Kazuo Masuda and Director-General of Defence Policy Taro Yamato.
The International Dimension
The league’s founding statement called for information-sharing with the United States. Christopher Mellon addressed the Japanese members in an online speech at the formation meeting. In August 2025, the league invited American policymakers to provide input online. Luis Elizondo stated in May 2026 that “Japan is eager to share their UAP data and information with the U.S.” and that “Japan requested to enter into a bilateral information sharing agreement.”
Yoshiharu Asakawa, an opposition lawmaker from Nippon Ishin who serves as the league’s driving force, has repeatedly raised UAP questions in Diet proceedings. He and fellow lawmaker Kei Endo both stated publicly that they had personally observed UAP. In November 2024, Asakawa spoke at the Sol Foundation’s symposium in San Francisco as “General Secretary of the UAP Caucus, Parliament of Japan,” appearing alongside Garry Nolan, Jacques Vallee, Ryan Graves, and Leslie Kean.
On 11 May 2026, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara confirmed at a press conference that Japan was analysing a tranche of previously classified Pentagon files, including two videos of UAP spotted near Japan, “with great interest.” He stated the government would “make specific, case-by-case decisions after comprehensively considering various factors, including the risk of our intelligence-gathering capabilities being exposed.”
Japan’s parliamentary league represents the most significant Five Eyes-adjacent development in UAP policy outside the United States and the United Kingdom. Its leadership, seniority, and bipartisan composition are without precedent in the Asia-Pacific region.
Related: GEIPAN | The Sol Foundation | Americans for Safe Aerospace
