The government will ask commercial shipping firms to let Self-Defense Forces reservists use their vessels as military transports if remote Japanese islands have been invaded and need to be retaken, a new defense plan says.

The troop deployment plan, an outline of which was shown to Kyodo News, provides the basis for defense guidelines adopted in December by the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

It assumes Japan will act in line with the emergency deployment plan when taking back remote islands occupied by foreign troops in a broad area along the Nansei Island chain, stretching southwest from Kyushu and including Okinawa and the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea at the heart of bilateral tensions with China.