The editorial staff of The Japan Times selected these domestic stories as the most important of 2015.
1 Defense shift: The Diet enacts security laws in September that allow the Self-Defense Forces to engage in collective self-defense and a wider range of missions overseas, marking a historic departure from Japan's pacifist postwar policies. Tens of thousands of people rally outside the Diet in protest.
2 Hostage crisis: The Islamic State group executes self-styled military contractor Haruna Yukawa in January and journalist Kenji Goto in February after three-way negotiations to free them fail. The incident spurred the government to revamp its contacts in the Middle East, deploying additional staff to embassies in the region and establishing a new intelligence liaison unit under the Foreign Ministry.