The Eurasian Triangle. Russia, the Caucasus and Japan, 1904-1945

Japan and “Total Espionage” Ë 51

sia’sOkhranain Paris was spending more than 8,000 French francs a month in 1905,¹³³

while its cumulative expenses during the war in Paris amounted to millions in today’s

Euros.¹³⁴

In the realm of Russian nance, the Caucasus occupied a special place. Whereas

the annual expenditure on military intelligence ranged from about 4,000 to 12,000

rubles per military district in Russia, the Caucasus military district alone received

56,890 rubles for maintaining secret agents in “Asiatic Turkey.”¹³⁵

One of the most important lessons Russia learned from its encounter with the

Land of the Rising Sun was the signicance of intelligence. It was not that Russia

was unaware of it. Indeed, at the time Russia’s intelligence was as good as that of

any other European country. Certainly once the war started, Russian police placed ev-

ery Japanese and everyone suspicious under careful and thorough surveillance.¹³⁶Yet

Japan’s innovations took Russia by surprise. Preparing for war against a formidable

European power, Japan recognized itself as an underdog and so went to extraordinary

lengths, often beyond the imaginable for the Russians. What Japan did at the time

foreshadowed what came to be called in the 1930s “total espionage.” Japan sought to

enlist all Japanese everywhere, from businessmen and journalists to maids and pros-

titutes, to gather intelligence. Moreover, it deployed its spies widely under the guise of

stokers, cooks, and waiters on boats traveling between Russia and foreign countries,

orderlies in Russian hospitals, prostitutes, nannies, and maids in Russian households

in Manchuria and beyond, construction workers, bakers, clerks at foreign businesses,

stevedores, barbers, owners of inns, hostels, and brothels, Buddhist priests, enter-

tainers such as circus performers, and many others. In 1905, for example, expecting

the Russian Baltic eet to stop for coal stocking on its way to Japan, Japanese agents

were working in Singapore, Saigon, and elsewhere as Chinese coal stevedores. Rus-

sian reports of the time were full of warnings of these deceptions.¹³⁷Japan’s activities

should not have been a surprise because, after all, espionage was a deception game.

What was unimaginable to Russians was that many educated and capable Japanese

ocials, including those from noble families, would willingly disguise themselves as

humble laborers such as cooks, barbers, and coolies. In a strictly hierarchical organi-

zation like the Russian military, this was almost unthinkable.

As an English observer noted at the time:

With characteristic pertinacious care, the Japanese have for years pried into other nations’ af-

fairs. With them espionage has been bred in their bones, and fostered by custom, approved and

rewarded by Government. They have collated information about all places, of late more especially

133 “Tainaia voina protiv Rossii,”52.
134 Inaba,Akashi k ̄osaku, 160.
135 Derevianko, “Russkaia agenturnaia razvedka,” 76.
136 See many reports in GARF, f. 102, PP DP 1904, op. 316, d. 14.
137 See, for instance, Osmanov,Iz istorii russko-iaponskoi voiny, 341, 345, 398, 424-25.