Masayuki Takayama dismantles the myth of Hotsumi Ozaki by revealing his rapid psychological collapse during interrogation, his naïve admiration for U.S. propaganda figures like Carl Crow, and his ignorance of American efforts to divide Japan and China through the CPI.
Linking Ozaki’s actions with global communist networks, including Agnes Smedley, this chapter exposes the smallness behind the supposed “revolutionary hero” and challenges long-standing postwar narratives and media mythology.

The following is from the column by Masayuki Takayama—who is the one and only journalist in the postwar world—published at the end of the newly released issue of Shukan Shincho yesterday.

People not only in Japan but all around the world surely feel, from the bottom of their hearts, that my assessment of Masayuki Takayama is absolutely correct.

I subscribe to Shukan Shincho every week solely for the purpose of reading him.

All emphases within the text other than the headline are mine.

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Here Comes Your Execution

Around two months before Pearl Harbor, Hotsumi Ozaki—one half of the Sorge case—was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department.

“Once he was confined in the Meguro Police Station, the nightly torture left him crawling back to his cell,” wrote someone connected to the Asahi Shimbun, Ozaki’s old home.

But Chief Inspector Hiroshi Miyashita of the Special Higher Police, who interrogated him, categorically denies this:

“When I told him that I could never forgive anyone who engages in espionage while Japan is at war, his face turned pale, and he collapsed from his chair.
After remaining silent for a while, he pleaded, ‘Please do not call me a spy, a piece of human scum. I am a politician. Please acknowledge that.’
When I told him he could think whatever he liked, he gave in easily.”

This story is convincing.

According to investigators who handle corruption cases and other “water-related” crimes, people who are bureaucrats or hold social status must first have their pride stripped away completely.
Once they are made psychologically naked, they fall easily.

Ozaki, who believed he carried the Comintern on his back, lost his footing mentally when he was treated like a lowly spy.
Once collapsed, he confessed honestly and was sent to Sugamo Prison.

In April of 1944, his appeal was dismissed, and his death sentence was finalized.

By then, he seemed resigned to the judgment of being “just a spy,” and from his letters to his wife, we can see his concern for the future of their daughter born to such a father.

Slightly amusing is that in his private correspondence he recommended Carl Crow’s Handbook for China as an interesting read.

After World War I, the United States, in order to drive Japan and China apart, established the Shanghai branch of the Committee on Public Information (CPI), led by the Secretary of State, the Secretaries of the Army and Navy, and representatives of the media.

They bought off Chiang Kai-shek with money and used U.S. diplomats, correspondents, missionaries, and even Pearl Buck to instill pro-American, anti-Japanese sentiment in the Chinese people.

One result was the May Fourth Movement, directed by U.S. Minister Paul Reinsch.

Carl Crow was the CPI’s field commander in China.
Yet Ozaki—ignorant of this background, ignorant of the intentions of American diplomacy, and having even shared a bed with Agnes Smedley for the sake of world communist revolution—appears remarkably small.

To be continued.