One way that Japan could share information with Taiwan could be through its close ally the United States, added Onodera, who said he had visited Taiwan in January, where he was briefed about threats posed to the island by China.
Japan on Tuesday said that it suspected Chinese spy balloons had flown over Japan at least three times, most recently in 2021.
Japan’s defence forces did not intercept any of them, but Tokyo may relax its rules of engagement to allow Japanese fighter jets to shoot them down, as the United States did this month, Onodera said.
“If an object were to sink to an altitude used by commercial aircraft or crash, even if the risk is only small, it still represents a danger to people,” he said.