Japan is moving a little closer to productively mining what may be a huge deep-sea trove of rare earths and thereby hardening its supply chain and perhaps also helping the United States to do so.
Relaying the optimism of Indian Defense Review, a writer for Daily Galaxy suggests that these deep-sea resources “Could Fuel the World for 700 Years” even though commercial mining has yet to get underway (March 21, 2026).
Whether or not this guess is correct, reports are auspicious.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the vessel [a deep-sea drilling ship called Chikyu, shown above] had gathered the sediment at a depth of nearly 6,000 meters, or about 19,700 feet, and called the test retrieval “a world first.” She also said the operation was “a first step toward industrialization of domestically produced rare earth in Japan” and linked it to the goal of building “resilient supply chains” for rare earths and other critical minerals so Japan can avoid overdependence on a single country. [This “single country” is China, from which Japan imports “roughly 70 percent of its rare earths.”]
The sample recovery did not come out of nowhere. Japanese researchers had already identified rare earth-rich mud in waters near Minamitorishima during surveys in the 2010s, and the area within Japan’s exclusive economic zone has been estimated to contain more than 16 million tonnes of rare earth deposits….
The confirmed event is the recovery of sediment containing rare earth elements from extreme depth. It does not yet mean Japan has proved large-scale extraction is practical, profitable, or ready to enter commercial production.
So everything is still preliminary. If all goes well, though, it means that the U.S. did a good thing in October 2025 when it signed an agreement with Japan to work together on securing supplies of critical minerals and rare earths.
Japan may intend to redouble efforts to render this deep-sea mining project practical now that China has curtailed exports to Japan of dual-use goods—goods with both civilian and possibly military uses. This export measure is just one of many CCP efforts to punish Japan for a public observation by Prime Minister Takaichi that the country she leads would be within its rights to help Taiwan defend itself if ever attacked by the mainland.
