“Japan has begun the world’s first deep-sea mud mining test in an attempt to reduce its dependence on Chinese rare earth minerals,” reports The Doomslayer. Mining.com explains:Chikyu, a government-backed Japanese mining vessel set sail on Monday for waters near Minamitori Island, a remote coral atoll in the Pacific, to study seabed mud rich in rare earth elements at a depth of about four miles. Last week, Beijing banned exports of dual-use items, including certain minerals, to Japan’s military and began broadly restricting rare earth shipments to Japan, according to reports Beijing has neither confirmed nor denied. In 2010, China curtailed rare earth exports following a maritime incident near disputed islands in the East China Sea. The Minamitori Island initiative is the first attempt by Japan to source rare earths domestically rather than overseas.