Japan’s spies for the chop?

Press, 25 October 1985, Page 16

Japan’s spies for the chop?

By

TOSHIO KOJIMA,

of Reuter, in Tokyo

Japan has had no law against spying since World War II partly because of revulsion against the obsessive secrecy of the former military regime. Now the Prime Minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone, and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (L.D.PJ want to create an anti-spy law with a possible death penalty for people found guilty of betraying Japanese State secrets. A draft bill defines State secrets as “unpublished matter on defence and diplomatic affairs plus documents and pictures which require secrecy in view of Japan’s national security.” Maximum punishment “for a person who has conspicuously endangered national security by collecting State secrets illegally and passing them to a foreign country or countries” would be execution — which already exists for murder and several other offences, though it is rarely carried out. After twice failing to get agreement among L.D.P. members on an anti-spy bill, in 1980 and 1982, the party submitted the latest one to Parliament just before the summer recess. Four opposition parties wanted it scrapped, but the L.D.P., supported by its New Liberal Club coalition partner, succeeded in having it carried over to the next session expected to open in the middle of this month.

The L.D.P. first tried to work out an anti-spy bill soon after Japan’s biggest post-war spy scandal, in January, 1980. In that case, Soviet military attache Colonel Yuri Kozlov left Japan under suspicion of involvement in military espionage. A retired Japanese, major-general, who was a former deputy head of the Army Intelligence School, and two intelligence officers were found guilty of giving Kozlov information on the Chinese armed forces.

The retired general was given the maximum sentence for breach of military regulations under the Self-Defence Force Act — one year in prison. The intelligence officers were dismissed from the army and given eight months in prison, under the act. In 1979, a Soviet journalist, Stanislav Levchenko had defected to the United States after working for four years in Tokyo. He said he was an agent of the K.G.B. — the Soviet intelligence and. security service — with 200 Japanese on his payroll. In June, last year, Tokyo asked the Soviet Embassy’s First Secretary, Arkadii Vinogradov, to leave the country “for engaging in undesirable activities” and said he had tried to obtain confidential information from a Japanese com- » puter firm. Its strategic position and wealth of high technology make Japan one of the world’s most tempting targets for spies. The country lies athwart the Soviet Pacific fleet’s exit route to the Pacific from Vladivostok, and it provides bases for 45,000 United States troops and their advanced equipment. The major opposition group, the Japan Socialist Party (XS.P.), denounces the L.D.P.’s spy bill as “being aimed at bringing back the era of oppression of freedom of speech which existed till the end of the war.” A J.S.P. spokesman, Akenobu Unno, told Reuter: “It is part of the Nakasone Government’s policy of leading Japan to militarism.” The English-language daily, "Japan Times” said in an editorial: “An anti-espionage law is a double-edged sword in a free and open society. Therefore, great prudence is required of lawmakers proposing such legislation ... Those who experienced World War n are still haunted by dark memories of a police state and mass detention of people on charges — often concocted — of espionage and treason.” In the biggest spy case before the end of World War 11, Richard Sorge, a leading German newspaper correspondent to Tokyo, was hanged as a spy chief for the Moscow-led Communist International (Comintern) on November 7, 1944. Hotsuki Ozaki, a leading Japanese journalist, was executed the same day as a leading member of the spy ring.