Japan revised its foreign aid charter on Tuesday to allow funding of non-military operations of other country's armed forces as part of its drive for a bigger role in global security.
The charter repeated Japan's long-standing policy that foreign aid should not be used for military purposes, but added that aid for armed forces' non-military operations such as disaster relief should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Tokyo has previously extended such aid but it is the first time such a policy has explicitly been stated in Japan's foreign aid charter, a foreign ministry official said.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has a stated goal of a stronger security profile for Japan that includes passing a law in 2015 to reinterpret its pacifist constitution.
The new foreign aid charter, revised for the first time in 12 years and approved by Abe's government, also extended official development assistance to richer nations.
Japan is the world's fourth-largest donor of official development aid behind the United States, Britain and Germany, and its foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, has called its development aid "Japan's biggest diplomatic tool."