Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community

摘要

Former U.S. Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates once said that "the most difficult task that falls to us in intelligence is to see the world as it is, not as we-or others-would wish it to be." In essence, he was describing one of the great conundrums of the intelligence world: how to find, identify, and illuminate facts within the darkness, without tainting those facts via influence or misperception from our own cultural milieu. Arguably, in the case of Japan, culture and tradition have played an oversize role in the history of the country's intelligence trajectory. As a result, according to Richard Samuels, "intelligence failure has nowhere been more plentiful or storied than in Japan" (p. xvii). Thus, the need for Special Duty-to explain Japan's strategic intelligence system relative to those of other modern powers, and to do so within the context of the nation's complex cultural and historical setting.