On 28 May 2026, at the National Diet building in Tokyo, a cross-party league of 83 legislators handed the Chief Cabinet Secretary a formal proposal asking the Japanese government to build a single institutional framework for unidentified anomalous phenomena. The league is chaired by a former Minister of Defence. The Cabinet Secretary’s office responded the same day.
The development has had little coverage in English-language reporting, which has stayed fixed on the United States. It is, on the procedural facts, the most concrete institutional response to the post-2017 disclosure cycle from any American ally: not a press statement or a leaked document, but a written proposal submitted through a parliamentary body to the executive.
The institutional backdrop
Japan has no publicly acknowledged office dedicated to unidentified aerial phenomena. The Japan Air Self-Defense Force follows standard procedures for intercepting unidentified aircraft, but until recently held no reporting protocol specific to anomalous phenomena. In 2023, following the United States precedent under the FY2022 National Defense Authorization Act, the government established initial reporting procedures for Self-Defense Force personnel.
Coordination of cross-cutting policy in Japan runs through the Cabinet Secretariat, the administrative arm of the Cabinet, which already houses the National Security Secretariat established in 2014. The UFO Giren proposal would place the new function in that same body.
The Cabinet Secretary’s statement, 11 May
The first sign of movement came earlier in the month. At an afternoon press conference on 11 May 2026, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara confirmed that he had personally reviewed United States footage of unidentified phenomena described as recorded around Japan. According to NHK World, Kihara said Japan is “constantly gathering and analysing information with great interest, while maintaining close coordination with the United States and other countries.”
On the question of whether Japan would release its own holdings, Kihara set a conditional standard. The government, he said, would make case-by-case decisions “after comprehensively considering various factors, including the risk of our intelligence-gathering capabilities being exposed.” The statement followed the first tranche of the United States PURSUE programme, released on 8 May, which included video reported to have been filmed around Japan.
The proposal, 28 May
Seventeen days later the parliamentary league acted. The UFO Giren, formally the Parliamentary League for Resolving Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena from a National Security Perspective, submitted its proposal to Kihara at the Diet. Reporting from FNN and the Kyodo wire service set out three requests.
First, the consolidation of information-gathering and command functions for anomalous phenomena into the Cabinet Secretariat. Second, the creation of a reporting environment free from stigma, so that pilots, defence personnel, and officials can file accounts without professional risk. Third, the establishment of a crisis-management framework for emergencies involving such phenomena.
The proposal cites the rapid international changes around the subject and names the United States PURSUE releases as the catalyst. It references the possibility of extraterrestrial life while stopping short of asserting it.
The Cabinet’s response
Kihara responded on the day of submission. In emergencies involving anomalous phenomena that cause, in the reported wording, serious damage to people’s lives and property, the Cabinet Secretariat would coordinate the relevant ministries and respond as a unified government. On disclosure of Japan’s own material, he maintained the case-by-case standard he had set on 11 May, citing the risk of exposing intelligence methods.
Who sits in the UFO Giren
A giin renmei, or parliamentary league, is a formal cross-party caucus within the Diet. It is not a standing committee, but it carries weight in proportion to its membership and the seniority of its chair. On both counts the UFO Giren is substantial. Its 83 members cross party lines, and its chair is Yasukazu Hamada of the Liberal Democratic Party, who served as Minister of Defence in 2008 and 2009 and again in 2022 and 2023.
That a former defence minister leads the league, and that the proposal is framed around national security rather than scientific curiosity, places it within the same institutional register as Japan’s other security policy. This is the feature that distinguishes the Japanese response from the others the archive is tracking: it arrived through the legislature, addressed to the executive, in the language of crisis management.
The coordination dimension
Both of Kihara’s statements stress that Japan is acting in concert with the United States rather than independently. The footage he reviewed was United States material. The catalyst the league named was the United States release programme. The standard Japan is setting for its own files mirrors the intelligence-protection caveats that have shaped the American releases. What the record shows is not a separate Japanese disclosure effort but a Japanese institutional response shaped around the American one, moving through Japan’s own parliamentary channels.
What the record shows
As of mid-June 2026 the proposal is a request, not a law. No new office has been created and no Japanese files have been released. What exists is a documented sequence: a senior government statement on 11 May, a cross-party legislative proposal on 28 May, and a positive but non-committal executive response the same day. Each step is on the record through Japan’s public broadcaster and its national wire service.
The archive will track whether the proposal advances into legislation or an administrative framework, and whether Japan’s stated case-by-case posture produces any release of its own holdings. For the wider allied picture, see the archive’s government records coverage and the Japan country file.
All quotations from Japanese-language sources are translations. The 11 May statement is quoted from NHK World’s English-language service; the 28 May proposal and response are translated from FNN and Kyodo reporting.
