Japan and “Total Espionage” Ë 47
activity was limited. Japan had also concluded an alliance with Britain in 1902. From
London Akashi traveled to Europe. Well aware of surveillance, he took precautions.¹⁰⁹
Nevertheless, Russia achieved a breakthrough in Akashi’s case in February 1905, when
a French cleaning woman (named “Mason”) at the International Hotel Jena (Iéna) in
Paris informed the Russian ambassador in Paris, A. Nelidov, of Akashi’s suspicious
contact with Zillicaus and “Empilov,” a pseudonym used by Dekanozishvili. (Mason
had rummaged through the trash can in Akashi’s room.)¹¹⁰
The Okhrana in Paris, headed by I. F. Manasevich-Manuilov, thereupon followed
Akashi and his contacts everywhere in Europe, tapped their conversations in hotel
rooms, opened and read their postal correspondence, and intercepted and decoded
Japanese diplomatic codes.¹¹¹In August 1905, Dekanozishvili, working near Lausanne,
Switzerland, wrote in his diary: “Russian agents surround me from all directions. They
bribe local postmen and telegraph carriers in order to nd everything out that way.
But I don’t sleep.... I have no assistants, but they have a whole army of collaborators
working for them.”¹¹²Asian-looking men from the Caucasus were also watched care-
fully by Russian agents, particularly in port cities like Istanbul and Batumi.¹¹³Those
few Japanese and Chinese residing in the Caucasus at the time were deported.¹¹⁴
In 1906 the Russian government published some of the Akashi correspondence in
facsimile to discredit politically those opposition groups that had received Japanese
money.¹¹⁵The exposé was also intended to cause a diplomatic scandal. Although after
the war Akashi had returned to Tokyo, he was soon sent to Berlin as a military attaché
to study Russian aairs. Considering him dangerous, Russia sought to drive him out of
Europe with the publication, and the scandal indeed made it impossible for Akashi to
remain there. In 1907 he returned to Japan, subsequently serving in Korea and Taiwan,
where he died in 1919.
109 See GARF, f. 102, DP PP 1904-II, op. 316, d. 28, ll. 39, 71–72, 74, 150, 156, 164.
110 GARF, f. 102, DP PP 1904-II, op. 316, d. 28, ll. 205–6.
111 This happened with the help of a Dutchman in The Hague (Den Haag). See “Tainaia voina protiv
Rossii.”Istoricheskii arkhiv1994, no. 3, 29–30, 53. At the time the FrenchSûretésucceeded in breaking
the Japanese diplomatic codes and may have helped the Russians. See Christopher Andrew, “Code-
breakers and Foreign O ces: The French, British and American Experience,” Christopher Andrew and
David Dilks, eds.,The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth
Century(Urbana-Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 36.
112 Nozadze, “gardasrul zhamta ambavni da sakmeni,” 121.
113 E.M. Osmanov, comp.,Iz istorii russko-iaponskoi voiny 1904–1905 gg.(St. Petersburg: Izd-vo S.-
Peterb. un-ta, 2005), 444, 449–50, 455.
114 See N.F. Bugai,L. Beriia – I. Stalinu: ‘Posle Vashikh ukazanii provedeno sleduiushchee.. .’(Moscow:
Grif i K, 2011), 58–61.
115 Iznanka revoliutsii. See also Chiharu Inaba, “Franco-Russian Intelligence Collaboration against
Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–05.”Japanese Slavic and East European Studiesvol. 19
(1998), pp. 1–23.