Weekly Playboy

Japan needs its own version of the CIA, citing a promise to establish a government intelligence organization.

Shinzo Abe, the man likely to become Japan's next prime minister by the end of this month.

Japan is currently a terrorists' paradise in that it's extremely vulnerable to unexpected attacks with far-reaching consequences.

But the chances of setting up its own equivalent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency are pretty slim.

"The United States does not publicly disclose the budgets and personnel levels of each of its intelligence organs like the CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency, but its entire budget for spying in 2006 was 44 billion dollars (or about 5.14 trillion yen). That figure exceeds the entire annual defense budget for (Japan's) Self-Defense Forces. What's more, there are about 100,000 people employed in U.S. intelligence, of which the CIA accounts for around 20,000," military analyst Toya Busujima tells Weekly Playboy, adding that the British example doesn't offer much hope either in terms of creating a Japanese CIA. "Britain has MI6, which looks after external affairs, and MI5, which is responsible for internal issues. For counterintelligence reasons, the budget isn't drawn up every year, but it's estimated to be around 15.5 billion dollars (about 340 billion yen) for 2007-8. There are no official figures on personnel levels, either, but both bodies have got somewhere from 2,500 to 3,500 in them."

Japan currently has no organization like the CIA or MI6. The Cabinet Information Investigation Office (or Naicho, in Japanese) is often suggested as the closest equivalent, but even then it's nothing more than a very distant relative.

"All the Office does is collect information from within and outside Japan and make a weekly report directly to the Prime Minister. Naicho has often been called 'Japan's CIA.' But, it's way too weak to really be able to live up to that name. The Office only has about 170 officials. And of those, only about 70 are working exclusively in intelligence, with the remainder borrowed from the National Police Agency, Public Security Intelligence Agency, the Foreign Ministry, the Coast Guard and the Finance Ministry," Busujima says.

As Naicho politics are dominated by the police, its efforts are concentrated more on domestic issues than anything happening outside of Japan �c but not exclusively.

"There are some officials in the Naicho's International Division who focus on Japan's relations with overseas," Kazuya Tanaka, a diplomatic analyst, tells Weekly Playboy. "There are about six divisions in the Naicho, with around 20 to 30 people in each."

With money and numbers well short of what it takes, what would Japan have to do to make its own CIA?

"Even if every government ministry and agency supplied staff, all the bad habits of the government's vertical administration wouldn't be eliminated. They'd need to take on all sorts of different people of all age groups. Considering the Foreign Ministry currently gets lots of its overseas intelligence from trading companies, it should be eliminated from having any part of the process," Hisayoshi Tsuge, an expert on foreign intelligence agencies, tells Weekly Playboy. "Then, they'd need to employee a slew of ex-CIA, ex-MI6 and ex-Mossad people to work as advisors. Some may question the sanity of allowing so many foreigners to be so close to such sensitive information, but there simply aren't any Japanese around capable of training local spies. Sure, there are some things that would be lost, but a whole lot more gained."