Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama ordered the Cabinet on Monday to study additional sanctions against North Korea to punish the hermit state over its sinking of a South Korean warship in March.
The Security Council of Japan, chaired by Hatoyama, met in the afternoon to express strong support for South Korea after it suspended trade with North Korea and banned its merchant ships from Seoul's waters for torpedoing the corvette Cheonan and killing 46 sailors.
During the meeting, Hatoyama instructed the Cabinet to study what additional sanctions Japan can take against the North, officials said. The meeting also confirmed that Tokyo will take concerted action with Seoul and Washington.
Afterward, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said Hatoyama also expressed a willingness to pass a bill through the Diet as soon as possible that would allow Japan to inspect vessels sailing to and from North Korea.
The inspections, which would be conducted in both Japanese territorial waters and on the high seas, would be in line with a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted last year following Pyongyang's test of a nuclear weapon.
While Japan has economic sanctions in place against North Korea over abductions of Japanese nationals, Hirano said the government is ready to take its actions up a notch, noting, "We need to consider sanctions of our own separately from that of the U.N."
In addition to the foreign and defense ministers, the justice and financial services ministers attended the meeting Monday.