On August 19, Nikkei Asia reported that Namura Shipbuilding was planning to construct a new drydock for large vessel construction by 2035. Japan is already the third-largest shipbuilder in the world, and the expansion carries significant security and economic implications for the region. It follows a renewed commitment by Japan to invest in the shipbuilding sector, amidst growing security concerns around lackluster U.S. capacity and the role allies like Japan can play in filling security gaps.
Yet the announcement highlights a more sobering reality regarding those prospects. Japanese shipyards are expanding because their current capacity is fully maxed out. Consequently, scaling future alliance cooperation may depend far less on reaching formal agreements than on securing available schedule space.
The new drydock would be located in Imari Bay, on the northwestern coast of Kyushu in Saga prefecture, and would be the first new large drydock in Japan since 2017. Upon completion, it will reportedly focus on construction of liquefied natural gas carriers.
The project follows a string of announcements from both the Japanese government and industry aimed at bolstering the sector. In November 2025, Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae designated 17 nationally important sectors – including shipbuilding – as sources of economic growth through public-private investments. The Japanese shipbuilding industry shared this ambition, outlining a roadmap aimed at doubling annual shipbuilding capacity to 18 million gross tons by around 2035. Both Japan’s government and industry are aiming to establish a 1 trillion yen ($6.5 billion) fund aimed at reviving Japanese shipbuilding.
This slew of investments is motivated by multiple factors. For one, the shipbuilding sector was an important driver of Japanese economic growth and industrialization in the post-World War II period. By shoring up the sector, Japan can maintain the industry’s industrial capacity, even though it has gradually lost market share over the past few decades.
Second, the importance of shipbuilding grows in the context of China’s globally dominant shipyards and growing naval presence. This is in marked contrast to the largely inadequate shipbuilding sector of the United States, whose naval shipyards are plagued by delays and maintenance bottlenecks. Meanwhile, supported by protectionist policies, U.S. commercial shipyards remain competitive solely within domestic markets, building ships at roughly quadruple the international price.
U.S. vessels have long conducted maintenance at U.S. bases in Japan. Discussions between Japanese and U.S. officials at the Defense Industrial Cooperation, Acquisition, and Sustainment forum have explored broadening repair operations for U.S. vessels in Japan beyond American bases. Such cooperation offers tangible benefits to both countries.
Utilizing Japanese shipyards for maintenance allows the U.S. to partly sidestep existing naval maintenance backlogs at home. Furthermore, eliminating the need for these vessels to travel to Guam or the U.S. mainland saves up to 17 days in transit.
On the other side, Japanese companies would commercially benefit from attracting the U.S. Navy as a customer. Japan would also enhance the availability of U.S. naval ships and minimize their time away from the operational environment, thereby strengthening regional deterrence in the Pacific.
The difficulty is that Japanese yards do not appear to have the spare capacity this cooperation would need. Namura’s decision to expand followed sustained high utilization at its existing Imari dock, and Tokyo’s own revitalization roadmap identifies capacity shortfall as the principal obstacle to doubling output. The bottleneck in expanding U.S. naval repair work in Japanese yards may be less a matter of interest than of capacity. It will be difficult for the U.S. Navy to schedule space already committed to paying commercial customers.
The new dock won’t relieve that pressure. It is not scheduled for completion until 2035, and its output is already planned: the facility is intended to construct LNG carriers.
Even if space at shipyards were available, major constraints remain. Namura is a commercial builder of bulk carriers and tankers, and conversion from commercial to naval work is not only a matter of scheduling. Yards require cleared workforces, familiarity with U.S. Navy specifications, and qualification processes that take time to establish. A workforce trained on LNG hulls cannot easily redirect to warship repair.
Labor in particular remains a major constraint for Japan. One estimate identified a shortfall of up to 12,000 workers nationwide in shipbuilding-related fields if the industry achieves its goal of doubling orders.
Japan is serious about underwriting shipyard expansion, but that won’t automatically translate into allied cooperation on maintenance. The capacity Japan is now building will not exist for another decade, and even then the dock time has already been claimed by commercial orders.
If both the United States and Japan want Japanese yards to service U.S. ships in a contingency, the arrangement has to be made before spots fill – and not after.