Japan is launching its first centralized intelligence agency since WWII. Here’s why

For instance, Japan doesn’t have its own foreign intelligence service, which is unusual compared with other major US allies like the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, said Philip Shetler-Jones, a senior research fellow of Indo-Pacific security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank.” The National Intelligence Bureau will formally launch on Friday, replacing previous structures criticized as disjointed and ineffective – and laying the foundation, experts say, for broader changes that could include an anti-spy law and a new external foreign intelligence agency similar to the CIA in the US, or MI6 in the UK.

Japan is launching a new centralized intelligence body for the first time since World War II – a controversial move that some fear deviates from Tokyo’s pacifist ideals, but one others say is much needed in a country so riddled with security weaknesses it has been called a “paradise for spies.