64 Ë A Lull
Russia’s fear of Japan became an impetus for reforming and strengthening its mil-
itary intelligence: “In a broad sense, the experience of Russian MI [military intelli-
gence] during the Manchurian campaign [of 1904–05] laid the corner stone of the es-
tablishment of one of the most powerful secret services in the history of the twenti-
eth century.”⁴³Russia’s military intelligence budget shot up. From 1906 to 1910 it in-
creased more than ve-fold, from 344,140 to 1,947,850 rubles. Even in 1913, on the eve of
World War I, the intelligence budget for the East (i.e., Asia) was 50 percent higher than
that for the West.⁴⁴The Caucasus occupied an equally important position. In 1914, for
instance, the Caucasus military district received the highest intelligence budget of all
districts.⁴⁵
With the rise of intelligence budgets came increased spy mania and spy hunting.
Russia’s fear of Japanese spies did not abate at the end of the Russo-Japanese War.⁴⁶
The memory of Japanese spies masked as Japanese Buddhist priests or Mongolian
lamas during the war remained fresh.⁴⁷If anything, spy mania in Russia intensi ed
with the suspicion that, under the guise of peace, Japanese spies were afoot every-
where.
The famous story “Sta Captain Rybnikov” (1906), by Aleksandr Kuprin, is symp-
tomatic of the psychic state of Russia after the war. In this story, Kuprin describes a
Japanese spy, cleverly disguised as a patriotic Russian military captain. It is assumed
that his somewhat Asiatic facial features are shared by many Cossacks from Orenburg
and the Urals. But eventually Rybnikov’s clever disguise is uncovered by true Russian
patriots, and the spy is caught. Indeed, Russia’s spy mania after the war was extraordi-
nary. Nearly all Japanese came to be suspected as military spies. Many were arrested.
Japanese consulates were depicted as centers of espionage. Likewise, Russian author-
ities treated Koreans and Chinese as potential Japanese spies and began excluding
them from working in the country as laborers. The Russian military spread the view
of all-pervasive Japanese espionage widely, while Japanese diplomats in Russia de-
scribed the Russian attitude as “terrifyingly suspicious.”⁴⁸In 1913, Army Major Sadao
Araki, on his return journey to Japan after serving as military attaché in St. Petersburg,
43 Evgeny Sergeev,Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan, 1904–05: Secret Operations on
Land and at Sea(London–New York: Routledge, 2007), 185.
44 Marshall,The Russian General Sta and Asia, 99-100.
45 Marshall,The Russian General Sta and Asia, 110.
46 For Russia’s spy mania during the war, see Leonid Heretz,Russia on the Eve of Modernity: Popular
Religion and Traditional Culture under the Last Tsars(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008),
153–54.
47 For these examples, see Hisao Tani,Kimitsu nichiro sen shi(Tokyo: Hara shob ̄o, 1966), 287, 291, and
Yoshimura, “Nichiro sens ̄o ki,” 179.
48 Michio Yoshimura, “Nichiro sens ̄o go ni okeru nihonjin gunji tantei kengi mondai.”Kokushigaku
105 (May 1978), 13 (referring to 1910). Of course, Japan had its own mania against Russian spies (rotan),
but it did not quite match the level of the Russian obsession. See Michio Yoshimura, “Rotan to nihonjin
shakai.”Rekishi dokuhon49, no. 4 (2004), 140–43.