When the United States shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the weekend, it prompted many to wonder: Could something similar happen in Japan?

Under law, Japan can scramble fighter jets to deal with any foreign intrusion into its airspace — from fighter jets and drones to balloons and other “aircraft.”

“If (an object), even if it’s a foreign balloon, intrudes into our airspace without permission, it would be considered a violation of our airspace, which we would counter with measures such as scrambling fighters,” Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki said during a regular news conference Monday.

Article 84 of the Self-Defense Forces law, which governs the military, allows it to take measures necessary to ensure that a foreign aircraft violating Japanese airspace is forced to land or leave. Balloons and drones are considered aircraft in such cases.

But Tokyo has been vague on whether the government can specifically order the SDF to shoot one down.

“We will do what we can do, appropriately on a case-by-case basis,” Defense Ministry press secretary Takeshi Aoki told a news conference Friday.

Japan may even have already seen Chinese spy balloons over its skies, including two instances of remarkably similar design.

Mysterious balloon-like objects have been spotted in Japan at least twice in the past — in June 2020 in Sendai and in September 2021 in Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture — causing a stir and prompting users on social media to ask if the objects were UFOs. In 2019, an official with the Sendai Space Museum in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture, also posted a photo of a balloon-like object on its website.

Sendai, Hachinohe and Satsumasendai are all home to a number of SDF camps, including air bases.

Images of the balloons from 2020 and 2021 show an uncanny resemblance to the one shot down over the weekend in the U.S.

Asked about how Tokyo dealt with the past reported incidents, Isozaki did not give anything away, saying only that Japan wanted to keep its cards close to its chest in terms of its tracking capabilities.

“I would decline to comment on the details of what the SDF did back then because it would reveal how we react,” Isozaki said, adding that the government decides which cases to disclose based on a number of considerations.

But he also said that Tokyo is looking into a possible link between those past cases and the most recent suspected Chinese spy balloon in the U.S.

Media reports citing weather data from U.S. authorities said that modeling showed it was possible that the balloon shot down off the country’s eastern coast could also have passed over Japan earlier.

U.S. officials said that the White House had considered downing the balloon on Wednesday after President Joe Biden was alerted of its presence over U.S. airspace, but that the risk of debris injuring people below or damaging property was too high. Biden ultimately gave the order for fighter planes to shoot it down over waters just off the coast of South Carolina on Sunday.

Hours after the dramatic move, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters that the downed balloon was not the first to enter U.S. airspace, calling it part of a Chinese “fleet of balloons developed to conduct surveillance operations.”

China has said that the balloon was nothing more than a weather-monitoring “airship” that strayed off course, while the U.S. insists it was much more, and part of a broader spying plan by the Chinese government.

The U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Chinese balloons had previously been observed over countries across five continents, including in South America, East Asia, South Asia and Europe.

In flash point Taiwan, the head of the democratic island’s Central Weather Bureau told the semi-official Central News Agency that similar balloons had been a fixture in its airspace. Ming-Dean Cheng also said in a Facebook post Saturday that the balloons had been spotted in Taiwan’s airspace in September 2021 and March 2022, with the latter even flying over Taipei's Songshan Airport, which is also home to some Taiwan Air Force units.

While smaller objects such as balloons could be difficult for Japanese authorities to detect, then-Defense Minister Taro Kono said after news of the unidentified white object emerged in June 2020 that his ministry was monitoring it around the clock.

The balloon shot down on Sunday, however, was as big as three buses — or roughly 30 meters wide — according to U.S. officials.

In Japan, there are other domestic laws that restrict people from flying hot air balloons. The aircraft law states that any object that could be a hindrance in another aircraft’s flight path would need to be approved or reported to the transport ministry beforehand.