{"id":22814,"date":"2026-05-15T06:13:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T06:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/22814\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T06:13:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T06:13:23","slug":"japan-eyes-dedicated-ship-to-lead-deep-sea-rare-earths-race-cut-reliance-on-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/22814\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan eyes dedicated ship to lead deep-sea rare earths race, cut reliance on China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japan<\/a>\u2019s quest for rare earth self-sufficiency and its drive to decouple from Chinese supply chains have prompted the government to consider building a dedicated deep-sea mining vessel to recover minerals from the Pacific Ocean floor.Local media reported that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party\u2019s special committee on ocean development will soon present a draft proposal to the Takaichi<\/a> administration, calling for unspecified project funding.<\/p>\n

While the initiative will face technological and financial hurdles, analysts say developing the natural resources within Japan\u2019s maritime exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is crucial to the country\u2019s economy and national security.<\/p>\n

\u201cJapan is very poor in natural resources, but we have the sixth-largest EEZ in the world and under all that ocean is a great deal of the resources that we need to power our economy,\u201d said Morinosuke Kawaguchi, a futurist and innovation expert.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese minerals are so rare that it is important to develop ways to exploit these resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tokyo\u2019s urgency to cut its dependence on imported strategic minerals led the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology to deploy a research ship in February to the remote island of Minamitorishima to retrieve rare earth sediments from a depth of 5,700 metres (18,700 feet).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s quest for rare earth self-sufficiency and its drive to decouple from Chinese supply chains have prompted the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[549,12,2937,18078,8,18076,2240,3676,18077,33,139,1955,2933,488,52,3720],"class_list":{"0":"post-22814","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-japan","8":"tag-beijing","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-diaoyu-islands","11":"tag-exclusive-economic-zone","12":"tag-japan","13":"tag-japan-agency-for-marine-earth-science-and-technology","14":"tag-liberal-democratic-party","15":"tag-minamitorishima","16":"tag-morinosuke-kawaguchi","17":"tag-nihon","18":"tag-pacific-ocean","19":"tag-rare-earths","20":"tag-senkakus","21":"tag-taiwan","22":"tag-tokyo","23":"tag-university-of-tokyo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}