TOKYO — Japan is deploying guided-missile destroyers and antiaircraft batteries with orders to shoot down a North Korean rocket if it falls toward Japanese territory, Japan’s defense minister said Friday.

The move appears to ratchet up the tensions surrounding the launching of what North Korea says is a rocket carrying a satellite, but what the United States and its allies fear is actually a test of a long-range ballistic missile. North Korea appears to be readying the rocket despite international calls to cancel the launching, which now appears likely to take place between April 12 and 16.

North Korea outraged Washington and its allies this month by announcing that it would launch a rocket to put a satellite into orbit in April. The United States demanded that North Korea cancel the launching, which it said would violate a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted in 2009 to prevent North Korea from developing long-range missile technology.

The Japanese defense minister, Naoki Tanaka, said the orders were intended to protect Japanese lives and property if part or all of the rocket, which is expected to fly over western Japan, goes off course. North Korea has said the upper stage of the rocket will pass over Japan and land in international waters east of the Philippines.