Originally published on April 21, 2019.
Using reports that several Japanese nationals visiting China had been detained on suspicion of espionage, this essay reflects on the nature of intelligence work and argues that totalitarian states such as China, South Korea, and North Korea pursue not only visible anti-Japan propaganda but also the infiltration of foreign intellectual circles, ruling classes, and media institutions.
It warns that this hidden intelligence activity is more essential than the propaganda visible on the surface, and suggests that Japan’s mass media and many sectors of society may already have been deeply penetrated.
2019-04-21
How to read the news…。
For the past several days, reports have continued that several Japanese who had suddenly gone to visit China were arrested and detained within China on suspicion of espionage.

What follows is from a chapter I published on October 11, 2015.
How to read the news.
For the past several days, reports have continued that several Japanese who had suddenly gone to visit China were arrested and detained within China on suspicion of espionage.
It is probably common knowledge throughout the world that Japan’s intelligence bureau, that is, its government information apparatus, is the weakest among the advanced nations.
For example, there is neighboring China, a fascist state, and South Korea, which continues to pursue education and policies that are Nazism itself, and whose true nature is that of a totalitarian state…。
As I have already written, what such countries choose in order to maintain their own regimes is external propaganda activity…。
That is why their propaganda abroad is fierce, and combined with the long-standing national character of countries of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies,” they continue to wage persistent and vicious propaganda campaigns.
The very fact that espionage is called intelligence accurately expresses its essence.
More than the visible anti-Japan propaganda they continue to wage with the United States as their main battlefield, their true essence lies beneath the surface, in sending large numbers of people into the intelligence of the other country, that is, into its intellectual classes, ruling classes, and news organizations.

North Korea has done this to South Korea, and has now succeeded in sending large numbers of prosecutors and judges into South Korea’s judicial world who follow North Korean ideology.
That is why their trials are outrageous, insiders tell us in the genuine journalism found in monthly magazines and the like.

I had long vaguely felt that a considerable number of such people must already have penetrated Japan’s mass media…。
And when, some time ago, Furutachi on Hōdō Station, with an air of utter innocence…。
Introduced a man with a Korean name as the international desk, I became convinced that my supposition had been correct.

If the several Japanese arrested in China really were what they are said to be, then there must be tens of thousands of times more such intelligence operatives already embedded in every field of Japan today.
That is what one ought to understand on seeing that news.