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Japan Confirms Reviewing Pentagon UAP Footage Near Japanese Airspace

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Summary

IBTimes UK reports (May 13, 2026) that the Japanese government is reviewing footage from the PURSUE Release 01 trove that depict UAP incidents near Japanese airspace and the East China Sea. Chief Cabinet Secretary minoru-kihara confirmed at a Tokyo press conference that he had personally viewed the 161 declassified files released May 8 by the department-of-war under donald-trump’s declassification directive, and said Tokyo is analyzing the material with Washington and other partners. Cited footage includes a 2023 infrared clip catalogued as dow-uap-pr47 (us-indo-pacific-command) showing multiple contrasting objects holding formation, and a 2024 clip of a “football-shaped” object with three radial protrusions (also documented in src-space-com-pursue-video-trove-2026-05 and src-twz-pursue-shrug-2026-05). The story situates Japan’s interest against the 2024 Defense Ministry posture shift, the 2023 Chinese spy-balloon context, and the bipartisan ~80-member japan-uap-parliamentary-group now pushing for a dedicated UAP office (japan-uap-framework). Kihara also signalled that any release of Japanese-held footage will be evaluated case-by-case to protect intelligence sources.

Key Claims

  • Chief Cabinet Secretary minoru-kihara has personally viewed the May 8 PURSUE Release 01 files and confirmed Japan is reviewing them alongside the U.S. and other partners.
  • The 161-file PURSUE release was triggered by Trump’s order for further declassification of Pentagon UAP records.
  • Among the declassified materials are videos recorded during Indo-Pacific operations near Japanese airspace and the East China Sea, including a 2023 infrared clip (dow-uap-pr47) showing several contrasting objects in formation and a 2024 clip of a “football-shaped” object with protrusions.
  • Kihara declined to detail US-Japan exchanges and said any future Japanese disclosure will be evaluated case-by-case against intelligence-protection concerns.
  • Japan’s Defence Ministry strongly suspects unidentified objects spotted over Japan from 2019-2021 were Chinese spy balloons, paralleling the 2023 U.S. shootdown.
  • A bipartisan group of roughly 80 Japanese lawmakers (japan-uap-parliamentary-group) formed in 2024 to examine UAP-related security issues and has since called for a dedicated UAP government office focused on airspace monitoring.
  • Japanese officials continue to frame UAP primarily as a national defence and airspace-surveillance issue rather than a non-human-intelligence question.

Notable Quotes

“[The government] continued gathering and analysing information related to unidentified aerial objects on a daily basis.” — Minoru Kihara (paraphrased)

“[It was] his first time viewing the material … the government would analyse it carefully.” — Minoru Kihara (paraphrased)

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