COLLABORATEON A(}Agnst JAPAN Dvrgng TME RVSSO-3APANESE WAR, Ti9pags

The JapaneseSocietyJapanese Society for Slavic and East European Studies iVbl.19 JopaneseSlavicandEastEutzqpeanStudies 1998 FRANCO-RVSSkN INTELLffGENCE COLLABORATEON A(}AgNST JAPAN DVRgNG TME RVSSO-3APANESE WAR, ti9pagS Chiharu INABA (Meijo Uitiversity) [Klay woreis: France, Russja, Intelligence, Russo-Japanese War] 1. Discovery of New Historicag Materaal in Russia armdi France During the Second World War, the United States decoded the Pup:ple Cipher, the secret cipher of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Atifairs. The results were "Magic filed in the enormous Diplomatic Summary", which must have been, it is said, very impertant fbr making US fbreign policy against japan. A few sQurces have out pointed that Japanese cryptography was also decoded by its enemy during the Russo-Japanese War. This Russian decoding has, however, not been proved for a long time. Dr.DmitriiB. Pavlov, Senior Researcher of the Russian Independent Institute of National and Social Problems, discovered a targe number of Japanese documents from 1904-05 at the GosudorstvenniiArkhiv Rossiiskoi federatsii (GARF: National Archives of the RussiaR Federation), Moscow: translations of diplomatic telegrams, copies and photos of Japanese letters, memorandums made by Russian agents, and reports by the Okhra.na (Russian Seeret Police). Dr.Antti Kajala, Docent of Helsinki University, thoroughly Iooked over these documents in 1991 and I got a chance to analyse them in summer 1992. The new Russian historical material showed that the Okhruna had intercepted Japanese letters and telegrams in France, and decoded its diPlornatic code during the war. In Europe, Japanese infbrmation was stolen by the Russians. The Russian materia] also points out that France, the Russjan ally, had collaborated to collect Japanese information. This material alone, however, is I NII-Electronic Library Service The JapaneseSocietyJapanese Society forforSlavic Slavic and East European Studies Chiharu INABA insufficient to assert that there was a certain collaboration between France and Russia. Only if there is correlation betvveen both French and Russian material, historians can begin to agree on the existence of the Franco-Russian intelligence collaboration. When I was conductiRg research about the French intelligence, g was introduced by Dr. Christopher Andrew's article to the decoding by the Freilch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which･there was a description about its decoding of Japanese telegrams.i I visited the Archives Nationales, Paris in the summer of 1993 and .1994 and sought out documents about decoding by the French There were reports about decoding written by a French inspector and police, 'I coded japanese telegrams. By chance, also found decoded Japanese telegrams in theArc:hives de Ministbre de la Afiliiires E)ute'riebtre, Paris. The nuc]eus direct]y concemed ",ith the interception and decoding of Japanese telegrams was France. 2. Suspacgon of the Leakage: Vp to the ?resent Colonel Motojiro Akashi, Japanese Military Attach6 to Sweden, who had con- ducted intelligence and subversion against Russia in Europe during the Russo- Japanese War, submitted Rakka ryusui, a report on his activities, soon after his arrival to Japan at the end of 190S. There is a description in the report that the Okhrana had obtained Akashi's and his Finnish and Georgian collaborators' achvltles: - I [Akashi Inaba] received a proposal for selling information about the Okhrana aetivities from a lady calling herself the wife of one of its agent. I told her that I would be lavish in spending money, if the information were important. She told me that I had been closely watched by the Okhnana which reported my actions in Paris and Hamburg and opened my letters. She gave instructions on the way to elude its observatiQn, And called my attentien te the fact that the Okhrana was taking notice of the arms purchase and that the Japanese code has already been decoded by the Russians.2 japanesetelegrams Can it be tiue that Akashi's letters .were opened in Paris and were decoded? The character of this material submitted to the General StafYi should be comparatively reliable. It was impossible, however, to prove the 2 NII-Electronic Library Service The JapaneseSocietyJapanese Society for Slavic and East European Studies FRANCO-RUSSIANCOLLABORAI'ION historical fact of whethcr the Okhrana had known the Japanese activities well or not. "Backward In summer 1906, a small pamphlet called of the Revolution -- Armed uprisings in Russia by Japanese money" was published in St.Petersburg.3 The content is t.hat Japan gave subsidies tb the Russian revolutionary parties and fomented arrped uprisings in Russia during the Russo-Japanese War. This gossip was soon reproduced in German newspapers,4 and became a topic of conversation in Berliil. Though Russiadid not want make with to trouble Japan after the war, why did it publish the scandal at the time? The Japaiiese General Staff ordered Akashi to research conditions in Russia after the war in secret and dispatched him to Berlin as a military attach6.5 It must not have been difficult to carry eut the order, if he had used his intelligence network built during the war. The Russians must have watched Akashi as a dangerous officer and tried to turn him out from Europe. It is obvious that Akashi couid not continue inteliigence easily in Germany, because the expos6 showed that his relationship with the revolutionaries was hated by the Great Powers. He worked as military attaehe only for ten menths and returned to Japan.6 In the are copies of pamphlet, there Iettersand telegrams, originally written in French, exchanged among Akashi, Konni Zilliacus, his most important collaborator and Fjnnishjournalist, Georgii Dekanozi, Georgian revolutionary, and Eugene Baud, an anarchist Iiving in Switzerland, flrom November 1904 to june 1905, in addition to their Russian translations and explanations. Each letter and telegram was sent to Paris or wrkten to Akashi and Dekanozi both of whom stayed in the capital. The Russian revolutionary parties teok in hand and p]anned a great uprising in St.Petersburg in summer 1905 with the Japanese aid. These letters tell the way in which aid was speRt and the course of purchasing arms fbr the uprising.7 The of the evidently discovery pamphlet indicated that the Japanese letters and telegrams were stolen by the Russians. In what way did the Russians intercept Japanese correspondence? Ziliiacus later described in his memoirs: - He [Akashi Inabq] shdiply rejected that the letters were stolen. They were brought to Japan and kept with other documents in the national arehives, [fokye. However, he had received letters not in Berlin but in Paris, where he 3 NII-Electronic Library Service The JapaneseSocietyJapanese Society forforSlavic Slavic and East European Studies Chiharu INABA was traveling at that time. Now he astonishingly recalled that transportation of post had been delayed. Letters, which the Japanese Minister to Berlin sent to him, reached him one day later than they should have usually done. This showed how the case was. And there were the other letters from Dekanozi to Akashi in the pamphlet in question. He had just the same idea asIdid, so the matter was completely clear. Dekanozi lived in Paris and wrote letters to Akashi in London. It is said exactly that the letters were not opened or photographed in England. In this respect, the French had evidently helped Russian friends.8 During the Russo-Japanese War, although France declared its neutrality at the beginning of the war, it took this pro-Russian policy because of the Franco- Russian Alliance concluded in 1891-94. This gave a lot of advantages to the Russian Baltic Fleet voyaging from Europe to the Far East due to French colonies rlbkyo in Africa and Asia. Furthermore, the French Minister to made efforts for to Russia the Russian prisoners of war, such as sending information on them and bringing them letters and a number of commodities.9 In addition to such a close relationship, I assent to Zilliacus' suppositi'on that the French government should have come to the Russia's assistance, because the letters stolen by the Okhrana were sent from and received in Paris. French participation, however, is historically no better than collateral evidence. Up to the beginning of the 1 990s, neither France or Russia referred to the matter as to whether the Japanese cQdes had been decoded or not during the Russo-Japanese War. 3. The Okhrana's Integligence againsg Japan A large number of material related to Russian intelligence against Japan during the Russo-Japanese War was discovered in the Departament flolitsii, Osohyi Otdel (DP OO: Special Section of the Police Department) Papers, GARF, which keeps an enormous volume of documents about Russian and Sovietjudicial and inner affairs. The Okhrana was commonly known as a seeret organization of the Russian police stationed in various districts of the Russian Empire and foreign countries to keep watch on aRti-Tsarist opposition groups such as revolutionaries, 4 NII-Electronic Library Service The JapaneseSocietyJapanese Society forforSlavic Slavic and East European Studies FRANCO-RUSSIANCOLLABORrtl"ION liberalists, and minority nationaiities. The 0sobyi Otdel fbunded in 1898 was the section which supervised the organization.iO The material filed in the Osobyi Otdet consisted of reports of its domestic and foreign branches, and attached papers: letters, memorandums, telegrams, orders, and other documents. The Material discovered in the GARF is main!y the reports and attached papers which I.F.Manasevich-Manuilov, the Subsection Chief of International Espionage and Investigation under the Osobyi 0tdel, had sent to the director of the Police department during the Russo-Japanese War. The attached papers contain letters .and memorandums written by Japanese officials and officers stationed in Europe and leaders of the anti-Tsarist opposition groups, Japanese encoded diplomatic telegrams and their decoded ones, and so on.ii Analysis shows that the expose in 1906 was edited within the documents "the filed in Reproachable anti-Russian activities by Japanese colonel Akashi and his collaborators such as Dekanozi, Zilliacus and others", in the DP 00 papers.

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