The approval clears the final set of hurdles for Japan's postwar arms sales, opening the door to future exports including a next-generation fighter jet and combat drones.

Japan has endorsed scrapping its long-standing ban on lethal weapons exports, marking one of the most significant departures from the pacifist defence posture the country has maintained since the end of World War Two.

What changed

The move clears a final set of hurdles that had blocked Japan from conducting postwar arms sales, and is intended to facilitate future exports of weapons systems such as a next-generation fighter jet and combat drones. Japan could now sell weapons to more than a dozen countries.

The decision is directly tied to Japan's ambition to build up its domestic arms industry, which has operated under strict export constraints since the 1960s.

Security backdrop

Japan's government has described the country as facing its most severe and complex security environment since 1945. That assessment has driven a broader military buildup, including efforts to reinforce what officials have characterised as a southern defensive perimeter stretching through the island chains to Japan's southwest.

Faith in the reliability of US security guarantees has also come under renewed scrutiny in Tokyo, adding urgency to efforts to develop an independent defence industrial base and deepen arms cooperation with partner nations.

Significance of the shift

Japan's pacifist constitution and the domestic political consensus built around it kept the country out of the global arms trade for decades. The latest approval represents a deliberate policy choice to move beyond those constraints, prioritising defence industry development and alliance interoperability over the restrictions of the postwar framework.

The practical effect is that Japan's defence manufacturers will now be able to pursue overseas contracts for lethal systems — a category that was entirely off-limits under the previous rules.