In the 6th century A.D., Japan was introduced to Sun Tzu's Chinese military classic The Art of War. Japan’s Imperial Court, as well as the various clans that constantly vied for power, studied this text for its lessons in espionage techniques. The need for intelligence grew as members of rival religions grew suspicious of each other.
These suspicions resulted in a conflict between those who wanted to make Buddhism the state religion and the defenders of Shintoism, the native religion. The ninja—born of the desire to escape Imperial religious persecution and death—was a man who mastered the art of making himself invisible, an art known as ninjutsu.
The Way of the Warrior
Bushido, or the “way of the warrior,” is the feudal-military Japanese code of chivalry valuing honor above life. Bushido was probably most visible to Western eyes in the form of the kamikaze (“divine wind”) of World War II, Japanese pilots on a one-way mission to fly their aircraft into enemy ships. Such traditions as bushido and ninjutsu would later combine with Western methods and technologies in Japanese intelligence.
Japan's Isolation Comes to an End
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Japan was isolated from the rest of the world, save for a few Dutch traders permitted to conduct business there. On July 2, 1853, Commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed into Edo (Tokyo) Bay with 967 men aboard four large armed ships to request trade relations with Japan, thereby ending Japan’s isolation.
Fourteen years later, Prince Mutsuhito assumed the throne and took the name Meiji, meaning, “enlightened government.” Meiji planted the seeds for the beginning of a national revolution known as the Meiji Restoration. Many Japanese decided the country needed a stronger government as well as the Western world’s more advanced technology in order to avoid the foreign domination that was befalling China.
During Meiji’s reign, Japan became an industrial nation able to compete with Western nations. At the same time, Japan’s interest in foreign intelligence was codified by the Charter Oath, read in a ceremony before the emperor and 400 officials on April 6, 1868, in Kyoto. It said, “Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundations of Imperial Rule.”
The Black Ocean Society
When Japan went to war with China over relations with Korea in 1894, intelligence on the troop movements of Chinese forces contributed greatly to Japan’s victory. About a decade before the first Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1894, Kotaro Hiraoka, a wealthy samurai interested in mining developments in Manchuria, formed the Black Ocean Society, or Genyosha, in 1881.
With professed goals “to honor the Imperial Family” and “respect the Empire,” the Society’s purpose eventually became expanding Japanese influence overseas and acquiring intelligence from China, Korea, Manchuria, and Russia. The introduction of compulsory education in Japan a decade earlier in 1872 aided the Society by permitting inquisitive students to study abroad. Some of these students would carry out assignments for the Japanese Army in China.
In 1882, Mitsuru Toyama, a leading member of the Black Ocean Society, sent approximately 100 men to China to collect intelligence. According to Richard Deacon, author of Kempei Tai: A History of the Japanese Secret Service, “Japanese Army chiefs were enormously impressed [and] from then onwards they gave intelligence as high a priority as armaments. No other army in the world at the turn of the century put so much faith in the support of an all-embracing espionage system.”
References:
Draeger, Donn F., Ninjutsu, The Art of Invisibility: Japan’s Feudal-Age Espionage and Assassination Techniques. Charles E. Tuttle Company: Tokyo, Japan, 1989
For a look at the Black Dragon Society, successor to the Black Ocean Society, read " Japanese Intelligence in the Early 20th Century: The Black Dragon Society."
Cleve Gray - Cleve Gray is a former intelligence analyst and has worked as an associate editor for the Marine Corps Gazette magazine. He has lived in ...
