diff --git a/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/bazel/rules/java/BazelJavaSemantics.java b/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/bazel/rules/java/BazelJavaSemantics.java
index 0058d60a627deb..f627e85b23aaf1 100644
--- a/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/bazel/rules/java/BazelJavaSemantics.java
+++ b/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/bazel/rules/java/BazelJavaSemantics.java
@@ -440,7 +440,11 @@ private static Artifact createWindowsExeLauncher(
                 "classpath",
                 ";",
                 Iterables.transform(classpath, Artifact.ROOT_RELATIVE_PATH_STRING))
-            .addJoinedValues("jvm_flags", " ", jvmFlags)
+            // TODO(laszlocsomor): Change the Launcher to accept multiple jvm_flags entries. As of
+            // 2019-02-13 the Launcher accepts just one jvm_flags entry, which contains all the
+            // flags, joined by TAB characters. The Launcher splits up the string to get the
+            // individual jvm_flags. This approach breaks with flags that contain a TAB character.
+            .addJoinedValues("jvm_flags", "\t", jvmFlags)
             .build();
 
     LauncherFileWriteAction.createAndRegister(ruleContext, javaLauncher, launchInfo);
diff --git a/src/tools/launcher/java_launcher.cc b/src/tools/launcher/java_launcher.cc
index e02d0ea1ff588b..d653dfe298bc51 100644
--- a/src/tools/launcher/java_launcher.cc
+++ b/src/tools/launcher/java_launcher.cc
@@ -359,7 +359,7 @@ ExitCode JavaBinaryLauncher::Launch() {
     jvm_flags.push_back(flag);
   }
   wstringstream jvm_flags_launch_info_ss(this->GetLaunchInfoByKey(JVM_FLAGS));
-  while (getline(jvm_flags_launch_info_ss, flag, L' ')) {
+  while (getline(jvm_flags_launch_info_ss, flag, L'\t')) {
     jvm_flags.push_back(flag);
   }