Defense Minister Shinjiro Kihara told the Diet on Thursday that Japan has no intention of introducing gene-edited military dogs, and at one point admonished the opposition lawmaker who raised the issue to "state the facts accurately."
Kihara was answering a question from Constitutional Democratic Party lawmaker Maiko Tajima at the Upper House Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the 5th. The exchange turned on whether a photograph he posted on social media had set the debate in motion.
Tajima said the matter "stems from a social media post by Minister Kihara," describing a photo taken with the head of a US company that she said uses gene editing and cloning to breed dogs suited to harsh duties. She asked what position the ministry would take on using such animals.
Kihara rejects the premise
Kihara called that characterization "a complete misreading of the facts." He said the Nikkei newspaper reported on October 24 that Palmer Luckey, founder of the US high-tech weapons maker Anduril, and others hold such a concept, and that he had posted a photograph of himself shaking hands with Luckey "long before that."
Kihara said he put the photo on X, formerly Twitter, last December. "I posted the photo long ago, and later some people used it to make an introduction — isn't that the reality?" he said, rejecting Tajima's claim that his post was the origin.
“As politicians we shake hands a great many times. That gets tied to an issue that emerged afterwards. Don't you find that deplorable? First, I want you to state such facts accurately.”Shinjiro Kihara, defense minister
He then said plainly that the ministry "is not considering the introduction of gene-edited military dogs at all." Japan does keep security dogs for search and rescue, base security and explosives detection, he said, and they were deployed for rescue work after this year's Kumamoto earthquake.
Tajima thanked him for what she called a "very clear answer" that the ministry had no such plan, and moved to her next question.