Cracking the Crab: Russian Espionage Against Japan, from Peter the Great to Richard Sorge

Richard Sorge is one of history’s most famous spies. This hard-drinking, womanizing, motorcycle-crashing Soviet officer penetrated the German embassy in Tokyo during the 1930s and gathered intelligence credited with changing the course of the Second World War. It is an intriguing tale; but Sorge’s spy ring was just one chapter in a much longer history of Russian and Soviet espionage in and against Japan.

Cracking the Crab tells the extraordinary full story of Russian intrigue targeting Japan, from first encounters in the eighteenth century to the Soviet declaration of war in August 1945. Colorful episodes include Gojong, King of Korea, being smuggled into the Russian legation dressed as a woman in 1896; the 1927 ’Tanaka Memorial’, an infamous forgery purporting to be Japan’s hidden plan for world domination; and the secret intelligence of ’Nero’, a Soviet agent supplying invaluable insight into Japanese strategy during the Second World War.

From Russians murdered in broad daylight in Meiji Tokyo to Soviet honey traps and ’white magic’ at the Battle of Nomonhan, this is a landmark history of the covert struggle between two great powers of the modern age.

James D.J. Brown is Professor of Political Science at Temple University, Japan. He is a specialist on East Asian politics and a regular media contributor, including for the BBC. His books include Japan, Russia and their Territorial Dispute; and Japan’s Foreign Relations in Asia and The Abe Legacy (both co-edited).