Honourable spies

Press, 20 November 1982, Page 16

Honourable spies

A History of the Japanese Secret Service. By Richard Deacon. Muller, 1982. 306 pp. Illustrations $48.95. (Reviewed by David Gunby) The author of highly-regarded studies of the British, Russian, Chinese and Israeli secret services, as well as a history of Western Naval Intelligence, Richard Deacon is perhaps the doyen of writers about spies and spying — in the realm of non-fiction, at least. The products of long and careful research, his books are invariably well planned and lucidly written, and reveal an impressive grasp not only of the facts concerning the various secret services, but also of the ethos which informs each of them and makes it distinctive. These virtues are certainly in evidence in Mr Deacon’s latest study — that of the Japanese secret service. For while the author marshals an enormous array of. facts during his survey of four centuries of espionage from the age of the great Hideyoshi onwards, it is his grasp of the underlying principles by which the Japanese secret services have worked, and of the relationship of these principles to those central to Japanese society which makes the study so' fascinating. It is made clear, for instance, that in Japan spying is, and always has been, regarded as an honourable profession, and that, as a consequence', the Japanese authorities have in general been much more forthcoming about their intelligencegathering systems than their European counterparts. It is also pointed out that the Japanese have preferred, traditionally, to gather information by legal rather than illegal means, that they take a much broader view of what is worth collecting than their occidental rivals, and that they are much more willing to take the long view of the time needed adequately to complete an operation. Just how significant these differences have been, and are, can be seen from the report of one of the earliest Japanese

agents established in London in the 1870 s. Reporting on the armaments industries in Britain, France and elsewhere he adds: “The most important lesson to be learned in European countries is that their arms producing factories are not efficiently . geared to the national effort. Some firms put their profits before national requirements, while in many factories production is slowed up through incompetent direction of labour and work which requires 100 or 200 men in Britain and France could be accomplished with a third or less of these numbers in Japan. Yet in Russia, it would seem, the situation is worse: the ratio there would be four or five Russians to one Japanese.” Incisive words indeed, and seemingly as true now as a century ago. The point is. though, whether the Occidental secret services would have bothered, until recently at least, to have gathered information of this kind? Certainly the Japanese are still geared to this kind of gleaning and when, for instance, they contemplated building factories in Britain, they made sure before they did so that they understood the local trade union system and the class structure, and recognised what was needed to avoid the problems in labour relations endemic to Britain. The results have amply justified the effort. All in all, Mr Deacon’s is a most rewarding book, full of insights into the Japanese way of doing things, and interpreting them sympathetically for an English-speaking audience. Some will say that Mr Deacon goes too far in this respect; that his book glosses over Japanese sins of commission and omission. It has been argued recently, for instance, that the paternalism of major Japanese firms, in Japan at least, is not always benign, and that the concensus (sic) of which he is so great an admirer may not be truly that. Yet even allowing for a measure of Japanophilia, this is a rewarding book, and proof that history can teach us valuable lessons.