Gen Nakatani
中谷 元
Minister of Defence
Incumbent
Assumed office 24 December 2014
Prime Minister	Shinzō Abe
Preceded by	Akinori Eto
In office 4 April 2001 – 30 September 2002
Prime Minister	Yoshirō Mori Junichirō Koizumi
Preceded by	Toshitsugu Saito
Succeeded by	Shigeru Ishiba
Personal details
Born	(1957-10-14) 14 October 1957 (age 58) Kōchi, Japan
Political party	Liberal Democratic Party
Alma mater	National Defense Academy

Gen^{[n 1]} Nakatani (中谷 元 Nakatani Gen, born 14 October 1957) is a Japanese politician who served as head of the Japan Defense Agency under present prime minister Shinzō Abe^[1][2] in the first cabinet of Junichiro Koizumi.

Shigeru Ishiba and Gen Nakatani, ex-ministers of Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP) affiliated to the openly revisionist lobby Nippon Kaigi,^[3] are the prime movers behind a proposed rearmament of Japan. On 30 May 2013, The ruling LDP Council of National Defense approved the draft of the full-scale rearmament of the country. This would also cause the renaming of the Japan Self-Defense Forces into that of a full army of national defense. They presented a draft reform of the rearmament that was approved and sent to the Government for consideration. Shigeru Ishiba called the current restrictions imposed after the Second World War on the size of the Japanese armed forces as long out of date. ^[4] He is now a retired Japan Ground Self-Defense Force officer.

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Defense Ministers of  Japan since 2006 Kyuma Koike Komura Ishiba Hayashi Hamada Kitazawa Ichikawa Tanaka Morimoto Onodera Eto Nakatani