Japan's -B- Conspiracy

JCadmin · Site Admin Joined: 12 Feb 2008 Posts: 65

A Spy during the Russo-Japanese War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashi_Motojiro

Akashi was sent as an itinerant military attaché in Europe at the end of 1900, visiting Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, staying in France in 1901, and moving to St Petersburg, Russia in 1902. As a member of the Japanese Secret Intelligence Services, Akashi was involved in setting up an intricate espionage network in all major European cities, using specially trained operatives under various covers, members of locally-based Japanese merchants and workers, and local people either sympathetic to Japan, or willing to be cooperative for a price.

In the period of growing tensions before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Akashi had a discretionary budget of 1 million yen (an incredible sum of money in contemporary terms) to gather information on Russian troop movements and naval developments. While based at St Petersburg, he recruited the famous spy Sidney Reilly and sent him to Port Arthur, to gather information from within the Russian stronghold on its defenses. After the start of the war, he used his contacts and network to seek out and to provide monetary and weaponry support to revolutionary forces attempting to overthrow the Romanov dynasty.

Akashi was also known for his talents as a poet and as a painter, interests that he shared with fellow spy and close friend General Fukushima Yasumasa. It was also a shared interest in poetry and painting that enabled him to cultivate Sidney Reilly into working for the Japanese.[1]

Narrowly escaping capture and assassination by the Ochrana several times even before the start of the war, Akashi relocated to Helsinki in late 1904, although he traveled extensively to Stockholm, Warsaw, Geneva, Lisbon, Paris, Rome, Copenhagen, Zurich and even Irkutsk. Akashi helped funnel funds and arms to selected groups of Russian anarchists, the secessionists in Finland and Poland, and disaffected Moslem groups in the Crimea and Russian Turkestan. Akashi is also known to have met with the exiled Lenin in Switzerland. It is widely believed in Japan that Akashi was behind the assassination of Russian Interior Minister Vyacheslav von Plehve (whom many in Japan held responsible for the war), the Bloody Sunday Uprising and the Potemkin Mutiny. General Yamagata Aritomo reported to Emperor Meiji that Colonel Akashi was worth "more than 10 divisions of troops in Manchuria" towards Japan winning the war. Akashi was promoted to colonel at age 40.