A win via the Liberal Democratic Celebration-Japan Innovation Celebration coalition, led via Top Minister Sanae Takaichi, within the election of the Decrease Space on 8 February 2026 was once neatly predicted before the election day. Alternatively, what brought about wonder was once the size of the victory; her ruling coalition has gained over a two-thirds majority or ‘supermajority’ of the seats. It is going to give her authorities a ‘monopoly’ to put into effect her home and international coverage schedule since the ruling coalition now has sufficient votes to override dissent from the Higher Space, by which the coalition is a minority. Takaichi’s election victory was once the results of a convergence of a couple of components quite than any unmarried decisive motive. However, China featured prominently in Japan’s electoral politics, as her way to managing China-Japan bilateral members of the family, particularly on crucial minerals, turned into a salient marketing campaign factor. A less-known unusual exploration workout within the waters surrounding a small far off island within the Pacific Ocean was once skilfully ‘hijacked’ via her for election functions.
After changing into Japan’s Top Minister on 21 October 2025, she controlled to satisfy Xi Jinping at the sidelines of the APEC Financial Leaders’ Assembly in South Korea on the finish of the month. Alternatively, bilateral members of the family started to bitter every week later. 3 occasions, specifically, warrant our consideration. They’re (in chronological order): The break-up of the 26-year alliance between the Liberal Democratic Celebration and Komeito (introduced on 10 October 2025); Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan within the context of collective self-defense on 7 November 2025, and China’s announcement of banning exports of dual-use goods, together with crucial minerals, to Japan on 6 January 2026.
The constraints at the export of dual-use items resembled the unofficial embargo on Chinese language exports of infrequent earth components to Japan in September 2010 within the wake of the territorial dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. After Takaichi’s remarks on a conceivable Taiwan contingency and explicitly linking Japan’s safety to it underneath the common sense of collective self-defense, China applied tighter, restrictive exports of critical minerals and infrequent earths to Japan in December 2025 and January 2026. Alternatively, what differs between the 2010 and 2025 business restrictions is that Takaichi has realized from her mentor, Shinzo Abe, in regards to the ‘China danger’ and is aware of the risks of over-dependence of crucial mineral provides from China and supply-chain vulnerabilities.
Amid the diplomatic feud with China over crucial minerals, Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama referred to as for preventing China from the use of crucial minerals as an ‘economic weapon’.
On 19 January Takaichi introduced a snap election scheduled for 8 February. With out the moderating pressure of Komeito, which requires continued engagement with China, Takaichi has been given a unfastened hand to maintain China on her personal ideological phrases. As Japan’s first feminine top minister and an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, she has been referred to as Japan’s ‘Iron Lady‘. She has followed a hardline nationalist coverage against China, refusing to retract her remarks a few Taiwan contingency, regardless of intense diplomatic force from Beijing.
A key theme of her election marketing campaign was once financial and mineral safety from the China danger. A carefully populated outlying island referred to as Minamitori Island (or Minamitorishima, often referred to as Marcus Island) has transform a focal point of Japan’s mineral safety coverage. Within the northwestern Pacific Ocean, Minamitori Island is ready 1,850 km (or about 1,000 nautical miles) southeast of Tokyo. Within the run-up to the election day, her authorities introduced in a high-profile means the exploration of Minamitori and its good fortune. In impact, she instructed the citizens a ‘tale’ that her authorities has now discovered a viable method to organize China’s bullying and toughen Japan’s financial safety.
On 12 January 2026, every week sooner than the announcement of the snap election, Japan’s flagship deep-sea drilling vessel, Chikyū, launched into a month-long voyage to Minamitori Island to habits exploratory drilling of deep-sea dust. On 2 February, a couple of days sooner than the election, the Cupboard Place of job and the Japan Company for Marine-Earth Science and Era (JAMSTEC) introduced that the vessel had effectively retrieved 350 metric tonnes of rare-earth-rich dust from a intensity of 6,000 meters at the deep-sea ground. The extracted dust contained excessive degree of rare-earth components and yttrium (REY). It’s estimated that the seabed surrounding Minamitori Island incorporates infrequent earth reserves of greater than 16 million tonnes, enough to satisfy the worldwide call for for related rare-earth components for greater than 700 years. It can be the arena’s third-largest rare-earth deposit.
This undertaking itself was once no longer new; it adopted previous exploratory campaigns in the similar space. Japan plans to build a deep-sea dust processing facility on Minamitori Island via 2027, and Chikyū, operated via JAMSTEC, has already been endeavor preparatory operations there. With ‘full-scale exploration’ reportedly scheduled for February 2027 – at a projected fee of as much as 350 metric tonnes of rare-earth-rich dust in keeping with day – and a business feasibility record together with mining prices following the full-scale exploration via March 2028, Japan targets to transform the first nation to pursue commercial mining of the deep-sea ground.
Alternatively, in keeping with deep-sea mining (DSM) mavens whom the creator has lately interviewed in Japan, DSM isn’t but commercially viable, nor does Japan these days possess any environmental affect overview framework in a position to adequately addressing the related environmental dangers. Consistent with the informants, business viability stays a long-term prospect. At the moment JAMSTEC has the technical capability to extract roughly 350 tonnes of REY- wealthy dust in keeping with day. Alternatively, for operations to be commercially viable, extraction fee would wish to building up via no less than 10 occasions, i.e. 3,500 tonnes in keeping with day. But even so, the site of any long term refinery vegetation stays not sure, in large part on account of Minamitori Island’s remoteness from Japan’s primary islands. It took 5 days for the drilling vessel Chikyū to succeed in Minamitori Island from Shimizu Port in Shizuoka prefecture, a significant Eastern port. It is going to pose vital logistical demanding situations if hundreds of tonnes of REY-rich dust are concerned. At the moment, Chikyū is Japan’s most effective drilling vessel in a position to lifting rare-earth-bearing seabed dust from depths of as much as 6,000 meters.
As well as, the environmental affect of deep-sea mining remains to be an unknown. Even though in 2022, Japan amended its Mining Act to include rare-earth minerals into its mineral checklist to be able to facilitate the improvement of extracting REY-rich dust within the seabed inside of its unique financial zone (EEZ). Alternatively, the Act makes a speciality of mining rights and their use with out protecting environmental coverage. However, despite the fact that Japan’s Environmental Affect Evaluation (EIA) Act (Act No. 81) was once followed as early as 1997 and has been amended a number of occasions since then, it does not cover seabed resources.
Given the monetary and environmental uncertainties and dangers, DSM isn’t across the nook. Simply for election functions, the Takaichi management tended to magnify the promising possibilities of Japan’s DSM inside of its territory, growing an affect that her authorities controlled to ascertain a China-free crucial mineral delivery chain. Her authorities extremely boasted the good fortune of the Chikyū exploration and went to nice lengths to frame it as ‘a significant fulfillment each in the case of financial safety and complete maritime building’. Takaichi has additionally broadly hailed the a hit, government-led, deep-sea mining check as a ‘international first’. In her remark posted on X (formerly Twitter)on 2 February, she referred to the good fortune to as a ‘first step towards industrialisation of locally produced infrequent earth in Japan’; and it might identify ‘resilient delivery chains for infrequent earths and different crucial minerals to keep away from over the top dependence on a selected nation’. Clearly, that ‘explicit nation’ is China.
Regardless of the ‘good fortune’ within the remaining exploration round Minamitori Island, it’s going to be some distance too sanguine to conclude that exploitation with business viability – very other from medical exploration – will also be undertaken within the foreseeable long term. All the way through the interviews with the creator, scientists in Japan argue that it could take no less than every other decade, if no longer extra, for the rustic to succeed in the degree of full-scale extraction of deep-sea dust inside of Japan’s EEZ. The tale that Japan’s DSM has completed a significant leap forward was once ‘built’ to help Takaichi’s election marketing campaign which, amongst others, aimed to counter a looming China danger to the provides of crucial minerals. Takaichi capitalised at the exploration consequence and China’s re-use of coercive financial statecraft to relate that she will be the proper and succesful chief for the rustic, amid strained members of the family with China.
This research suggests that when the election, detailed DSM exploitation plans will likely be left to execs to figure out. What is sure is that her authorities is made up our minds to continue with diversifying the provision chain of crucial minerals and that deep-sea mining in Minamitori Island’s EEZ is a type of channels that Japan is raring to expand once conceivable. An implication of this mining coverage can be that war with China round Minamitori Island could also be intensified. In June 2025 the Chinese language airplane service, Liaoning, was once observed to go into into the EEZ of Minamitori Island with experts had been speculating the political motive behind the entry. This island, albeit small, merits our nice consideration within the years yet to come.
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