Research Director Atsuko Kanehara participated in the Malaysia Maritime Security Conference 2025, which was held on the 21st of May 2025, in Malaysia.

◆Research Director Atsuko Kanehara participated in the Malaysia Maritime Security Conference 2025, which was held on the 21^st of May 2025, in Malaysia. The gist of her presentation and the PPT slides are as follows.

Among various maritime policies of Japan, as my agenda, I chose Japan’s policy regarding the special relationship between the Japanese Self Defence Force and the Japan Coast Guard. This is by consideration of the fact that many of the participants and attendants of the Conference were military/self-defence force personnel and those having certain relations to such missions.

The inherent point of the relationship between the Japanese Self-Defence Force and the Japan Coast Guard is the latter’s strict adherence to its nature as a policy/ law enforcement organ. Even in the extreme occasions of responding to armed attacks and coping with armed conflicts, the Japan Coast Guard would operate as a police/law enforcement organ in conjunction with the Japanese Self-Defence Force.

The most important result by this is the strict limitation on the use of weapons by the Japan Coast Guard. It is allowed to use weapons only as far as it is necessary to discharge its police function, which means quite a small scale of use of weapons in comparison to use of force for self-defence. It must strictly obey this legal rule under Japan’s domestic law, even in its collaboration with the Japanese Sele-Defence Force in responding to armed attacks and coping with armed conflicts.

In many countries of the world, coast guards and navies, on such extreme occasions of armed attacks and armed conflicts, would work together, in some sense, by incorporating the former into the latter. Roughly speaking, coast guards are allowed to work as military/ self-defence organs on such limited occasions.

So, the special relationship between the Japanese Self-Defence Force and the Japan Coast Guard should be difficult for other countries to understand.

Nonetheless, I think it is my responsibility, as a Japanese participant, to take the opportunity of the Conference, to explain to and ask enough understanding of, every stakeholder of the friendly counties, regarding the special relationship between the Japanese Self-Defence Force and the Japan Coast Guard. This is because, they have the possibility to cooperate with Japan to recover and maintain the peace and security responding to armed attacks and coping with armed conflicts in neighbouring sea areas.

◆ Related Paper by Research Director Atsuko Kanehara

“How to Ensure the Safety of the Japan Coast Guard While Maintaining Its Nature as a Police Organ When It Conducts Missions in Collaboration with the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force under the Control Guidelines,”

Japan Review, Vol. 6, Nov. 2,
https://www.jiia-jic.jp/en/japanreview/pdf/05JapanReview_Vol6_No2_Atsuko%20Kanehara.pdf

Atsuko Kanehara, “Reconsideration of the Distinction between the Use of Arms in Law Enforcement and the Use of Force Prohibited by International Law―With an Analysis of the Inherent Significance of This Issue to Japan,”
https://www.jiia-jic.jp/en/japanreview/pdf/JapanReview_Vol5_02_%20Kanehara.pdf

Atsuko Kanehara, “The Use of Force in Maritime Security and the Use of Arms in Law Enforcement under the Current Wide Understanding of Maritime Security,”
https://www.jiia-jic.jp/en/japanreview/pdf/JapanReview_Vol3_No2_05_Kanehara.pdf