The national security council will consider having Japan secure the capability to strike enemy missile bases in response to an imminent attack, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday after the group met to discuss North Korea's latest ballistic missile launch.
We reaffirmed that we will examine all possible options, including enemy bases strike capabilities, in a planned update of Japan's national security strategy, Kishida told reporters.
Pyongyang is analysing the Tuesday launch by Tokyo with an eye on the possibility that the test involved a submarine-launched ballistic missile, he said.
The Security Group and the region cannot ignore North Korea's strike progress on nuclear and missile technology, said Kishida.
Kishida and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno were out of Tokyo at the time of the launch for the first day of campaigning ahead of this month's lower house election. Both cut short their speaking schedules and returned to capital.
The prime minister told the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki was on call to handle any problems that could arise in his absence.
We were sufficiently prepared to cope with crises, Kishida said. We made arrangements so that I could return to Tokyo immediately via a Self-Defense Forces plane in an emergency. Kishida was stumping for a candidate in Fukushima Prefecture when North Korea launched the missile around 10 am Tuesday. Après moving into Tokyo for a speech, he took a tentative stop in nearby Akita Prefecture and cancelled a planned bullet train to Sendai, arriving an hour after the launch.
Matsuno, who was campaigning in his home prefecture of Chiba near Tokyo, interrupted his schedule to return to the capital after arriving at prime minister's residence after 1 p.m.
Yukio Edano, leader of the main opposition constituency Constitutional Democratic Party, criticized Kishida's decision to sit in Sendai after the launch, as well as the decision to leave prime minister and chief cabinet secretary away from the capital at the same time.
Edano should have returned to Tokyo at the soonest possible time, Kishida said.
On the contrary, Edano stressed that when he served as chief cabinet secretary under former Prime Minister Naoto Kan, one of them always stayed in Tokyo.
It seems that this Administration doesn't pay enough attention to crisis management, he argued.