The Foreign Ministry will raise the bar for career-track diplomats to become ambassadors and close down seven overseas missions as part of its reform package, Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi announced Wednesday.

Kawaguchi's "action plan" for reform sets a new rule under which career-track diplomats who have not served as section heads at the ministry cannot become ambassadors.

Currently, almost any career-tack diplomat can assume one of some 120 ambassadorial posts, but the new rule will limit the internal pool to the roughly 60 section heads.