March 8, 2025

The Maritime Self-Defense Force participated in a multinational military exercise co-sponsored by the United States and Ukraine last September, but the Defense Ministry kept this fact secret from the general public.

“Exercise Sea Breeze” took place in the Black Sea off the coast of Bulgaria, amid the Russia-Ukraine war.

Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Yamazoe Taku on March 7 at a meeting of the House of Councilors Budget Committee meeting asked why the government had kept this fact a secret from the general public.

Defense Minister Nakatani Gen answered that it was because the government had not dispatched any MSDF vessels and had only dispatched a small number of MSDF personnel to Sea Breeze 2024.

According to Nakatani, the MSDF first participated in the exercise as an observer in 2021. The exercise was canceled in 2022 due to the outbreak of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but the MSDF began its regular participation in the exercise in 2023. One MSDF officer and ten MSDF officers took part in the exercise conducted in the U.K. and Bulgaria, respectively, in 2024. However, the government did not inform the general public of any of this.

Yamazoe criticized the government, saying, “It is a major problem that the government secretly proceeded with the overseas SDF deployment.” He added that the SDF participation in the military exercise in a country that is in a state of war “is unprecedented and the fact that the government withheld this from public knowledge is also a serious problem.”

Yamazoe noted that the Japan-U.S. Joint Statement of last April stated that the geographic scope of the Japan-U.S. alliance covers “the Indo-Pacific region,” but that this February’s Joint Leaders Statement changed the scope to “the Indo-Pacific and beyond.”

Yamazoe pointed to the danger of further extending the alliance’s geographical area of interest, and demanded that Japan end its subservience to the United States and stop having the SDF participate in overseas military exercises under a cloak of secrecy.