Photo/Illutration Lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and junior coalition partner Komeito discuss wording for three national security documents at a Dec. 12 meeting. (Koichi Ueda)

Ruling coalition lawmakers on Dec. 12 approved draft revisions for three key national security documents after wording about China’s missile launches was softened for one of the papers, sources said.

The Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner, Komeito, will now separately have their party organs give their consent before Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Cabinet approves the revised documents as early as Dec. 16.

Komeito was concerned about how China was described in one of the documents.

The two parties found no problem with the draft for the National Security Strategy that said China represented “an unprecedented and largest strategic challenge” to Japan.

But discussions got bogged down over the original draft of a second document presented by government officials that stated that the landing of Chinese ballistic missiles within Japan’s exclusive economic zone in August was “a threat to our nation as well as residents of the affected communities.”

Beijing’s missile launches were intended as a protest against the visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Komeito lawmakers criticized the wording as potentially encouraging further antagonism between Japan and China.

Government officials proposed deleting “to our nation” and only describe the missile landings as a threat to the residents of the affected communities.

A proposal submitted to the government by the LDP in April asked that China be described as a “threat,” and the party was satisfied that the word was maintained in the draft.

Komeito lawmakers were also satisfied because the new wording was considered an explanation of what actually took place, the sources said.

(This article was written by Taro Ono, Naoki Matsuyama and Nen Satomi.)

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