Experts say Japan’s Minamitorishima mining push is driven less by ore than politics

Japan relies on China for about 90 percent of its rare earths and endured a halt in Chinese exports in 2010. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the waters around an island constitute an exclusive economic zone for the country that owns it, while a rock generates no zone. China has previously argued that Okinotorishima, a remote reef-islet at the southern edge of Japan's territory, is only a rock because no economic activity takes place there, and establishing a track record of economic activity on Minamitorishima could serve as evidence of Japan's effective control.

Shigeru Tanaka, director of the Asia-Pacific Resource Center, said a proposed moratorium on commercializing deep-sea mining until 2030 "shouldn't really be a big deal for Japan," since researchers believe commercialization by then is impossible. "Yet the reason they cannot support it is that there is political significance in continuing to show that Minamitorishima is being 'used,'" he said. "They're trying to show that economic viability exists on Minamitorishima. I suspect that's actually the current government's motivation. Deep-sea mining, as things stand, is economically unfeasible."

Three national projects are set to converge on Minamitorishima, about 1,200 miles southeast of Tokyo. The Defense Ministry has told Ogasawara Village, which administers the island, of its intention to begin missile launch drills starting next year, launching missiles with a range of 200 to 300 kilometers from truck-mounted launchers in drills moving from the United States to Japan. A month after the rare-earth extraction, in March 2026, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry asked the village to accept the first steps toward selecting the island as a final disposal site for Japan's high-level radioactive waste; the mayor consented in April.

Mayor Masaaki Shibuya said the rare earth and nuclear waste projects had been presented through separate channels and he believes they are “entirely distinct.” Village council member Masashi Miyagi said that when he asked METI and NUMO, “they only replied, 'National defense is not within our jurisdiction, so we don't know.'” If a nuclear waste site and a missile training range were to overlap on the same island, it could become an ideal target for an enemy nation. William Parkinson, a senator in the Guam Legislature, described the situation as the “logic of the frontier,” adding that being uninhabited “does not mean it is ecologically empty or that it is cut off from the surrounding Pacific community.”

In March 2026, Japan and the United States agreed to jointly develop rare earths at Minamitorishima, a move domestic media reported was intended to counter China, amid a rise in mining plans by Chinese state-owned enterprises in international waters off the island. Hiroyuki Yamamoto of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology said he first learned of the agreement through media reports and was “really surprised.” He said an announcement under the circumstances “would likely be more of a political stunt.” Tanaka said China's vessel explores close to Japan's territorial waters but on the high seas. He said that if the issue were simply resource development, Japan should obtain an International Seabed Authority exploration license for the same area around its EEZ or object to China's continued exploration as an ISA Council member.

Tom Hale, a researcher of critical mineral supply chains and the geopolitics of extraction at the University of Delaware, said the original rare-earth debate in Washington began with the 2010 incident around the Senkaku Islands, a group of uninhabited islands controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan. “The more you securitize your resources, the less time you have to solve the challenges,” he said, arguing that diplomatic, international and conflict de-escalation pathways would broaden the time available to address them.