STUDIES IN
INTELLIGENCE
a collection ol article* on the hisiorieal. operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects ot intelligence.
All statements of faci. opinion or analysis expressed in Studies in Intelligence are those of
die authors They do not necessarily reflect official positions or views of the Central Intelligence Agency or any other US Government entity, past or present. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government endorsement of an article's factual statements and interpretations
- jfo psychological andntecedentsudimentary ' national service.
INTELLIGENCE IN THE NEW JAPAN Adam Jourdonnais
Japan 6tands today Impressive at the gateway to Asia,
nation not simply rehabilitated from the physical disasters which capped its military adventures of the thirties and forties but with an economy reoriented and moderniseday that commands respect throughout the world. Althoughormal part of the framework of Western alliances, It has been governed consistently since the war by anti-Communist leaders and it provides base facilities. forces In north Asia. Its business and political leadership, while obliged to give due heed to the strong emotional urge for some kind of accommodation with mainland China, has overwhelmingly recognized that if Japan is touturerosperous and influential nation its basic interests lie in and with the West There is no similar emotional link to Russia; indeed, the history of Russo-Japanese relationsonsistent pattern of suspicion and distrust.
In most respects Japan's governmental structure has been modified and expanded to keep pace with the nation's growing international interests. The postwar Japanese foreignis now in action in respectable force on all the continents and particularly In the developing nations of Africa and South and Southeast Asia. Defense attaches are posted in the major Western countries. And atell-disciplined bureaucracy is back at work among the pile drivers andscaffoldings that mark the modernization of one of the world's great capitals.
Conspicuously missing In this picture of Japan's resurgenceorld poweromprehensive intelligenceWith their well-deserved reputation for energeticof the trappingsodem Western society, why have the Japanese apparently failed to fit themselves outew set of spectacles for examining the increasing complexi-
Ues of toternational politics? What has happened to the to dustrious bands ol Japanese agents who served the expansion Ism of the China and Pacific wars with their various cspionapr-and subversive apparatus?
To some extent the romantic wartime image of the Japanese spyalse point of reference.ense, also, the current absenceapanese mtemgence mechanism Is morethan real Nevertheless theTfl&repancy remains there Is little evidence that Japan has established or intends to create an intelligence system appropriate to its currentin world affairs. Among the reasons for this, we suspect, are some historical, psychological, and institutional influences on which we propose to touch in these pages.
Symbolical Tabus.
Semantic examination of some pertinent Japanesemay be useful in providing insight into the Japanese practice of intelligence. The word most broadly-intelligence" in Japanese iserm even more ambiguous than its English counterpart, connoting, among other things, either "intelligence" in our technical sense or "information" in the form of publicity or propaganda.its only appearance In the postwar bureaucratic glossary Is in the title of the Foreign Office's Information and Cultural Bureau. Japan's TJSIA. "Espionage" is morerendered as chdhd, but the wordistorical relic; it is not used by even the most hardheaded professionals among today's Japanese intelligence officers. Similarly,ifficult word to translate whkh was usedduring the war to describe the activities of the Japanese units scattered throughout Asia for covert political action and subversion operations, Isart of even the most arcane postwar professional Jargon.
All these words are indeed dirty words today, offensive to the ear and reminiscent only of wartime abuses of power. Two words which can be heard, at least in professionalcircles, without undue damage to the sensibilitiesillustrate the current psychology of the Japaneseofficer. The closest approximation to "agent" is kyor-yokusha, meaning at most "collaborator" but more literallyord that nicely suggests the delicacy with
which the Japanese approach the concept ol controllingsources. (Agents of foreign services, however, are likely to beame borrowed from English,nd the prevailing term for the mission of Japanese governmentengaged in Intelligenceword fit even for publicehian, "the public peace andhis word, as we shall see, reflects accurately three aspects of, and limitations*on, today's Japanese/'intelligenceto public attitudes, an overwhelmingly Internaland domination by professional police officials.
From Isolation to Conquest -
We do not propose to trace how the Japanese got that way or even very definitively whence they came,ewon the developmentapanese Intelligenceseem necessary. The central and obvious historical fact is that Japan has been an utterly closed society for most of its existence. The feudal lords and tbe shogun had their spies, ofin the ^terminable military campaigns which now provide material for Japanese movie and television thrillers analogous to ourthese were allquarrels which brought no need for internationalIt was afterdivineriumph of Intelligence indications, that repulsed the only threat ofmilitary invasion in Japanese history prior to theoperationhe economic and culturalwhich came after the opening of Japan to the world8 were eagerly welcomed in the suddenly awakenedto catch up with the rest of the world. If we consider the reports of Japanese students returning from abroad during this period to represent espionage, this loose system can then be considered the beginnings of Japanese secret foreign
It was really, however, only the evolutionolice state at home and the eruption of military adventurism abroad Ins that prompted the creation of intelligence andagencies In the government. They came, not as the Institutionalizationapanese tradition of intelligencebut rather as an adaptation of imports necessary to keep the military regime in power at home and to precede,
The New jopon
expand upon, and consolidate the military occupations In Asia and the Pacific. The importation was eclectic: the German general staff system provided the pattern for development of the military Intelligence system,ome Ministry in the European tradition setervasive police system which could rapidly be specialized into the Special Higher Policeconomiceeded to sustain anregime and control the economy in support of theeffort. Of today's world powers surely only the United States was competing with Japan In this turtle's race toan intelligence mechanism adequate to its international aspirations and commitments.
The linesational policy, however unpraiseworthy, were at least clear during this period, and with characteristic vigor the Japanese developed the intelligence formations they needed for its implementation. In many areas, as we know to our sorrow, they were successful. Their failures, however, may be more significant in that they often reflectedwhich are still In evidence in the Japanese approach to intelligence. It must be said, despite all the literature about wartime Japanese exploits of espionage and subversion and the undoubted accomplishment of individuals, that Japanese intelligence during World War JJ.ost irregular and diffuse pattern.
The Wartime Apparatus
Thereertain valid division of labor in the field ofcollection, with Imperial Army units generallyin China and mainland Asia, the Navy in the Southand to some extent in Europe, and the Foreign Office In the West. Personal and inter-service rivalries In Tokyo,tended to water down the accomplishments of thestationed abroad. Perhaps the roost disastrous example of this is to be found in the sad history of the navalnegotiations in Europe which sought during the months before Hiroshima to end the Pacific War but foundered onOffice incredulity and unwillingness to entrust theto Navy hands.'
Bulow. Robert J. C. Japan's Decision to Surrender.
Most of Japan's wartime intelligence and covert action work vas of course done in Asia, where the immediate requirements were the greatest, the military were in predominant force,ull selection of covers was available. Here there were the conventional tactical andnits, the kcmpei handling counterintelligence and security functions, TTreat profusion of("special servicefor clandestine operationshe latter were charged variously with softening up and penetrating target national groups, supporting and training puppet national armies, and assisting the conventional forces In maintaining the subjugation of conquered areas; some of them wereas task forces for specific covertpeacethen disbanded when their missions were accomplished or aborted. These tokumu kikan tended tothe best trained personnel, both military and civilian, drawing on the Nakano School in Tokyo and the Toa Dobun Shoin in Shanghai among others, and from them have come roost of the professional veterans who still find their waysoutpostwar intelligence
Most of the tokumu kikan were known during the war only by the names of theiruriosity perhapsin that these organizations in particular reflected the factionalism and diffusion of authority which in other ways still plague their profession. They tended to be most successful where they had strong leadershiplear and independent line of authority back to Tokyo. The Fujiwara Kikan, based in Singapore, is credited with the creation of the Indian National Army, whichime was effective inthe British in India. (Fujiwara. Incidentally, is one of the few wartime intelligence chiefs to have beensuccessfully in the postwar intelligence system; he has headed the Ground Self-Defcnse Force Intelligence School in recenthe Minami Kikanoint Army-Navymounted in Tokyo to establish the BurmaArmy, but it suffered rather seriously from an Army-Navy split and soon gave way to another, more notoriousunder CoL Iwakuro.
Military intelligence operations In China at one periodfrom another flaw not unknown to occidental
ET
New Jopon
undue yielding to the temptation to dispose of hotheads and mavericks by dispatching them to field establishments.TOJo availed himself of this luxuryegree thatime threatened the functioning of the China Expeditionary Force Headquarters at Nanking. Many of the younger officers who had participated in the ultranationalist uprisings of the thirties found toemselves^ exiled to intelligence outfits In China, and by sheer numbers theyrimaryin military operations until reassignment* putstaffeople back in the driver's seat Duplication of effort among Army. Navy, Foreign Office, and Greater East Asia Ministry intelligence officers also disfigured the China operation. In tactical and combat intelligence, however, it was for the most part highly effective.
The Occupation
Scoring its successes and failures, youthful Japaneselived out the war and then quite thoroughly died with the surrenderome individual officers managed to integrate themselves locally Into the newly Independentof Southeastall. they considered themselves to be Important Instruments in the creation of thesea few others found employment with the Chinese Nationalists. But the cold winter of defeatound the profession of arms, and with it that of intelligence, the most utterly discredited trade in Japan. The thoroughgoing mechanics of the Occupation broke up the returning military units and scattered their bedraggledto family farms and stores. The armed forces, the Home Ministry, the Foreign Office, and the Imperial General Staff were abolished and all their principal officers purged from public office. (Someucrative, if temporary, profession of peddling cached general staff documents to the intelligence services of the occupyingith the adoptionew constitution and new elections to the Diet, the formation of such national policy as an occupied nation could afford shifted uncertainly and somewhatfrom what was left of an entrenched bureaucracy to the national legislature and the revived political parties. There could be no place In this policyational intelligence system.
These Institutional changes, of course, did not Individually laxuhilate the motley corps of Japanese intelligencewhich had been developed over the past twenty years. Some simply gave up and tried chicken farming or Sentimentalists formed societies which metonth to rerninisce uselessly over past intrigues andood many found demeaning,but regular employment In theand historical intclilgence departmtnteo'f theheadquarters and its burgeoning local Their skills and their remarkable adaptability to what in effect was their new government made them, in fact, the blood and boneomewhat more orderly andIntelligence system than Japan had ever had, now provided free of charge by the occupation forces. But in(and in distinction from the German experience) their services were contracted for individually, and they gave their loyatties, opportunistically but completely, to the temporary and alien authority which had replaced their Emperor. Their employment was not the preservation intact of aintelligence mechanism but the recruitmentiverse group of jobless professionals who were,arge sense,all over again.
The Occupation thus set the institutional pattern for such indigenous Intelligence work as went on In Japan during the immediate postwar years. The psychological climate in which Japan shivered at that time comprisedomplex offactors as to stifle any significant attempt to retain an intelligence system proper in the Japanese Government. Many of these factors remain the same today, or theirhas been such as to keep on inhibiting the development of an intelligence system eleven years after Japan's return to national sovereignty.
ense, Japan5 returned to the familiar insularity once imposed by its own xenophobic leaders, now enforced by foreign conquerors. Economically broken, its leaders and its People, under Occupation tutelage, turned their thoughts inward to the staggering work of relieving food shortages,shattered industries, andeacetime economy. This had to be accomplished outside the context of the now forbidden Zaibatsu-government partnership which had created the war economy and in the faceassive re-
New jQpon
distribution of land holdings under Occupation directive. The Idea of foreign intelligence collection was not onlybut little short of ludicrous in those years.
The shift of the locus of power in Japan's limited political sovereignty from the civil service to the National Diet brought withoth opportunistic and to some extent honest wave of anti bureaucratic feeling, abetted not only by theof the long-suppressed political leaders who avoided the purge but also by the SCAP, directives which abolished both the government-sponsored parties of the wartime period and the most entrenched of the government ministries. There was understandably no public or popular urge to establish an internal securitywas in any case In the hands of thea psychology of dependence on foreign protection from both internal and foreign enemies seemed the only possible attitude the defeated nation could adopt.
Identification of these enemies was insychological as well as practical problem for the bulk of the Japanese. The wartime images of the Western foes were quickly shattered not only by the exigencies of the situation but by the behavior of the occupying powers, and the Emperor wasemocratization became the rallying cry. The Imprisoned local Communist leaders, rubbing their eyes, foundback in the political arena The police state wasand the exercise of police power seemed suddenly not only Immoral but unnecessary.
The philosophy that floated Into the vacuum In thenational psyche in these times was first anti-militarism androader pacifism. Japan's great nationalbecame the fact that its people had been the first toer the horrors of the atomic age. With all the militaristrom the Emperor on down exposed supine and broken onubbled altars and no equivalent available to take theiridespread national masochism grew up about the newnlikely shrines of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While theess of defeat which fostered this affliction could not persist jl after things slowly fell into their new places and economiceal and national pride returned, the Communists have seeno it that the atomic Meccas remain holy, and nowhere else outside the Bloc do so many non-Communists Join In the pU-
SE^tfcT j
&'
grimages of the Peace Movement. They do not need ansystem to help them find their way.
Stepsystem
In this psychological milieu, it is thoroughly understand-iibte that such organized Japanese Intelligence work as was carried on52 was done by scattered
groups or Individuals, mostajJ^un^Bfiie direction and
of Occupation authorities. The only investigative service,
such, which evolved within the Japanese Government during this period was the Special Investigation Board created under SCAP directive and influence within the Attorney General's Office. The main cadre of this organization came, not from trained military or foreign intelligence ranks, but from among the procurators of the prewar Justice Ministry, in thisof judicial investigation the Special Investigation Board was able toantle of respectability which permitted Its survival and Indeed growthecurity agency with some intelligence and gray propagandaew of tbe mainland operatives of the tokumu kikan, mostly from the China theater, joined this service, which emerged in aJapan2 as the Public Safety 'chian)Agency, taking on as well some senior militaryanalysts who at last were no longer proscribed from sucb duty by the purge.
The PSIA continuesationwide security agency, but with inherent disabilities which restrict its effectiveness in the intelligence picture. It has no police powers ofack which renders hollow its frequent boast that it is the "FBI oft does conduct extensive Investigations of Communist, rightist, and foreign subversive activities, buton its findings is hampered officiallyimid executive and legislature and unofficially by intense rivalry with the National Police Agency. Its analytical product is bothand of respectable quality, but is more likely to be used in massive annual "White Papers" Or thinly disguisedblasts at the Communists than in the orderlyof subversive elements and counter-action against them. And its placement ln the Justice Ministry makes it subjectonstant turnover of procuratorial personnel, untrained hi operational intelligence techniques.
SECRET
New
In contrast to the PSIA. the police resumed quietly and without apparent Occupation support their place in thesecurity structure. The return to sovereignty, of course made the reconstitutlonespectable police force anecessity, and It becameational service. Many of the most experienced police Intelligence officers had lost their seniority while sJtUng out the purge, and .their places In the reassembled hierarchy were at first taken hymore fortunate colleagues who had had no service In the Special Higher Police or other sections directly affected by the purge. One such officer, Mural Jun, whose good fortune and undoubted energy was compounded by service as Prime Minister Yoshida's secretary, was Instrumental in creating in the National Police Agency the Guard Divisionhich remains the police element directly concerned with the control of internal Communist activity and the surveillance of foreign Intelligence operations by Bloc and otherinubsequent irony finds many of the now rehabilitated former Special Higher Police officers in key posts in the National Police Agency and particularly in the Guard Bureau and Its regional counterparts, while Mural is now more profitably but loss dramatically devoting histo the complexities of staging4 Olympics in Tokyo.
The National Police Agency Is an impressive and effective service. Virtually all of its senior "commissioned officers" are graduates of the law department of the Tokyo or otherImjwrial Universities. They, and their postwarin more Junior positions, are well trained and well disciplined,ense of mission and esprit de corps which dates back to the origins of the Home Ministry, androup were less disrupted by the abolition of the Ministry than any other bureaucratic complex. For the most part notto the lingering popular distaste for military activity which has characterized Japanese public opinion sincend discreetly underplaying their internal security role they formed and continue to form the overwhelminglyforce in the Japanese postwar Intelligence apparatus The great paradox of this setup Is that, while no Homehas resumed Its place among the other principaldepartmentshe disciplined cadre of former Home Ministry bureaucrats play the major roles In almost all
ot today's Japanese security and Intelligence agencies, whether Internally or externally oriented.
The two chief outward-looking government offices are the Defense Agency and the Foreign Ministry. The Defense agency {still frustrated In its ambition of attaining ministry status) grew outational Police Reserve created by SCAP when the Korean War suddenly sheared the Occupation of its
combat unitsT^Slnce'teW*of the sem^br^mapcrlal military
naval officers had been rehabilitated from the purge at that-
time. Home Ministry alumni of the police system were called In. put In military uniform, and given charge of the Reserve. While this peacVpreservatJon organisation In due course evolvedilitary force (because the constitution isas prohibiting any army, navy, or air force, theservices bear the euphemisms Ground. Sea. and Air "Self-Defensend while officers with wartimeservice have been given senior command positions, It Is significant that police officers have continued to staff thecomponents. Most of the armyfor example, have been former Home Ministry officials, and the civilian bureau which controls the three military intelugence services has consistently been headedolice officer. This is not illogical, in that the police have little qualification for the tactical command posts. And it Is not Inappropriate,the fact that no Japanese troops are stationed abroad and there are few attache offices from which foreigncan be undertaken. Thus even within the Defense Agency the emphasis tends to be on internal security.
The Foreign Ministry has cautiously and very circumspectly provided for foreign intelligence collectionort, but its "service" ismall, personally and informallygroup of regular diplomatic officers who have unusually aggressive Instinctsenchant for acquiring Informants. It is still unfashionable to admit toiplomatic research and analysis function ln Tokyo, so the only analytical body in the Foreign Ministry Is actually an lntradepartmentalcomposed of senior officers from the various bureaus, who meet periodically to consider information received from diplomatic posts abroad along with contributions from other foreign and domestic sources. In several of the key embassies and consulates-general the peripatetic police have stationed
<llasii i
The New Ja,
officers commissioned lemporarily as foreign servw sonnel.
The Foreign Ministry has also provided the deputy of the mtrigningly-named Cabinet Research Chamber since it was formedhis small group is the only eminent body which has an officially (but delicately) edged foreign mtemgem^unction. The CRC. like Guard Bureau/owes itTeSence to*tfie busy MuraT'W became its first chief when it waschamber" of Prime Minister's Office in Yoshida Shigeru's first post-occu Hon adniinistration. Now an adjunct of the cabinethe and responsible 'to the Chief Cabinet Secretary, it is staffer pnrnarily by police officers on two- to three-yearlong with some former military personnel andves provided by other government agenciesunction. It has slowly and painfully attempted some foreign collection, mostly from Japanese travelers to Communist areasorm of collection In which neither the PSIA nor the police have left the CRC an openut it has devoted much of its effort to the analysis of the varied product of theseservices. It has always been headedenior police official.
While subject to the centripetal forces that seem to impel all Japanese intelligence bodies toward domestic and quasi-political problems, the Cabinet Research Chamber has made some admirable efforts toational foreignagency. Although It has never approached the imageinister "Japanese CIA" which both the Communist and the avowedly objective Tokyo press recurrently attempt to give it, its movement in the directionroader national function was evidencedhen an Estimates Division was formed. The purpose, achieved with spotty success, was to bring senior estimative attention to bear on problems of major foreign and security policy interest. Theowever,roup of relatively prestigious andusy private citizens, who have neither the time to devote to fe concentrated study nor the access to highly classified material essential to success in such an effort. Even In this select group (first headedespected lawyer who is now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) are to be found several retired Home Ministry officials nominated by the NPA, it might be
A,
noted. Because of presumed popular disapproval of theof such an office within the government, this "board of estimates" Is presented to the public as the board of directorsrivate research society. It meets as such to consider papers drafted by lbs tiny staff (three full-time governmenthe full complement of the Estimates Division of the CRC.
The commentsrank and perceptive senior official of1 -"
the CRC in2 on the problems faced by the*
tion to which he (like most of his colleagues) was temporarily assignedood catalog of the difficulties of anorganization in the new Japan. He noted: (a) the CRC's placementtaff office available to the Chief Cabinetfor such odd jobs as he. the Cabinet's overworked chief of staff, might wish to assign it; (b) Prime Minister Dteda's Towlogan which refersemarkablyadministration policy of avoiding controversialprograms; (c) bureaucratic rivalry, specificallyin the tendency of the National Police Agency tothe CRC as one of Its branches; (d) the lackareer service for CRC officials; (e) Japan's system o! parliamentary responsibility,esult of which each cabinet ministerand protects his own intelligence organization as aresource for meeting Diet Interpellations: and (f) the pervasive absenceeed for national Intelligence in the Binds of higher government officials
To this thoughtful list of disabilities might be added the complete lack of security legislation for protecting theor, in fact, establishing the legitimacyapanesesystem. Taken together, these clouds darken the view toward any effective national Intelligence center. If the targeting Is centripetal, the organizational forces are allin Japan's intelligence complex.
The Future
Thus the prospects for an integrated Japanese nationalservice remain poor. Apart from the negativeof public unreeepUvity and Institutional tradition. It cannot be expected that an orderly intelligence mechanism will be developed in the absence of an emerging national policy which demands It While preoccupied with economic expan-
adequately supplied with the commercialrequired forIs still largely and remarkably immune from the foreign responsibilities and commitments which would make felt the lackolitical and militarycollection system.emand for one were created by disaster in Southeast Asiaignificant shift in theof Communist China, one cannot help judging that. In Its delightfully Irrational way. Japan would probably more quickly to supply It
Original document.
Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: