Do we like Gen Nakatani?
Our score: 6 out of 10. No harmful words or acts turned up and his latest stand is on the right side, but the readable record is thin.
Gen Nakatani is a veteran Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker and a former defence minister, described by the AP as a national security expert. He isn't a celebrity in the Hollywood sense, so there's no red carpet goss here. What we have is a long career in a very conservative party, and the question is whether anything in it is harmful.
The big recent story is the ICC fight. After the US sanctioned the court and its Japanese president, Tomoko Akane, Nakatani said there was no reason for her or the court to face US “political coercion and sanctions”. He urged Takaichi to protest more firmly and demand Washington withdraw the measures.
He framed it as a question of trust rather than picking sides. Japan's US alliance and its commitment to the rule of law should not be “a choice of one or the other”, he argued, and staying silent would cost Japan credibility. Takaichi called the sanctions unfortunate, and critics say that's weak. Whether you think Nakatani is being principled or awkward for his own government, he's putting his name to it.
Harm check, openly: we found no remarks from him against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the climate, and no pattern of working with people who push that stuff. That is an absence in the reporting we could open, not a clean bill from a full vote-by-vote audit. One report that he backed a constitutional amendment to recognise same-sex marriage rested on a single headline we couldn't verify, so we've left it out.
On how he treats people, the one clear moment is from 2016. As defence minister he flew to Okinawa to lodge a formal protest with the US base commander after the arrest of a US base worker. He demanded discipline among US troops and said he was delivering “a strong message of regret and at the same time make a protest”.
The gaps matter. We couldn't open several pieces on his past human rights adviser work or older gaffes, and the Japanese parliament's records aren't something we could check vote by vote. So treat this as a decent first read, not the last word.