Japan and “Total Espionage” Ë 49
Russian police, when the war began in 1904, about ve hundred Japanese spies were
operating in Russia.¹²⁰
In Asia, as in Europe, Japan’s nexus with the Caucasus was evident. To be sure,
for obvious reasons, the main forces of Japanese intelligence in Asia were Asians of
third-party neutral countries: Chinese, Koreans, Mongolians, and others.¹²¹Japanese
spies often camou aged themselves as Chinese or Koreans or Mongolians. Yet quite
a few people from the Caucasus also ended up in the battle ground in various ca-
pacities in Manchuria. O cial Russian military reports during the war, for instance,
mentioned measures taken to neutralize “European spies” working for Japan, specif-
ically mentioning “Jews, Greeks, Armenians and Turks.”¹²²Another report discussed
the in ux of European adventurers and speculators to Manchuria during the war, be-
lieving that Japan recruited spies from among them such as former prisoners who had
served their terms in Sakhalin and deserters from prisons. Among them were men-
tioned Jews, Caucasians, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Germans, French, and English.
The report went on to say that Caucasians were particularly troublesome: about 150 of
whom were brought to Manchuria by “Gromov,” a contractor.¹²³Of course, Russia used
precisely the same groups of people for its own operations; Japan noted, for instance,
Greeks working for Russia.¹²⁴
Clearly, both Russia and Japan understood that the Caucasus was a region of
strategic importance and acted accordingly. Japan, for instance, used Odesa for intel-
ligence in the Caucasus. Before the war, the Japanese consul in Odesa had cultivated
an intelligence network in Turkey, Persia, Bulgaria, Serbia, and the Caucasus.¹²⁵
When the war broke out, the Japanese consulate was closed and the sta moved to
Vienna and Istanbul (“in order to engage in intelligence against Russia”).¹²⁶Odesa’s
role in turn attracted the attention of Russian authorities. From there the remaining
Japanese, protected by the US consul, continued to supply information to the Japanese
legation in Vienna. In the end, the former secretary at the consulate, Giichi Tagashi,
was arrested on 31 July 1904 and expelled from Russia on 3 August.¹²⁷
120 Osmanov,Iz istorii russko-iaponskoi voiny, 330.
121 On Japan’s use of Chinese agents, see David Wol, “Intelligence Intermediaries: The Competition
for Chinese Spies,” in Steinberg et al.,The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero,
vol. 1, 305–330.
122 D. Pavlov and S. Petrov,Iaponskie den’gi i russkaia revoliutsiia: russkaia razvedka i kontrrazvedka
v voine 1904–1905 gg.(Moscow: Progress, 1993), 201. On Greeks working as Japanese agents, see also
I.N. Kravtsev,Tainye sluzhby imperii(Moscow: Izd-vo RAGC, 1999), 102, 105.
123 Pavlov and Petrov,Iaponskie den’gi, 236–237 and 261–62.
124 Rei Hasegawa, “Nichiro sens ̄o to senjo no ch ̄ oh ̄osen.” ̄ Gunji shigaku42, no. 2 (2006), 125.
125 Osmanov,Iz istorii russko-iaponskoi voiny, 354.
126 Merthan A. Dündar and Nobuo Misawa, “Isutanburu no nakamura shoten o meguru ningen ̄
kankei no jirei kenky ̄u.”Toy ̄ ̄o daigaku shakaigakubu kiyo ̄, 46, no. 2 (2009), 191.
127 GARF, f. 102, DP PP, 1904, op. 316, d. 15, ll. 92, 119.