Konoe's confidant and the spy who helped save Moscow
I would like to go and die splendidly as a communist.
Hotsumi Ozaki was a journalist for the Asahi Shimbun and a committed communist who became the most vital Japanese asset in Richard Sorge's Tokyo spy ring. As an advisor to Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe and a member of his inner 'Breakfast Club,' Ozaki accessed the highest-level cabinet secrets, and in September 1941 he supplied Sorge with the decisive intelligence that Japan would strike southward rather than invade the USSR, enabling Stalin to transfer Siberian divisions that turned the Battle of Moscow. Arrested in October 1941, he was the only Japanese civilian hanged for treason during the war; his prison letters to his wife and daughter, published postwar as Love Is Like a Falling Star, became a bestseller.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1926–1927Journalist, Asahi Shimbun
- 1928–1932Shanghai correspondent, Asahi Shimbun
- 1930Met Richard Sorge in Shanghai
- 1934–1941Key informant, Sorge's Tokyo spy ring
- 1937–1941Researcher, Shōwa Kenkyūkai; cabinet advisor
- 1938–1941Member, PM Konoe's Breakfast Club inner circle
- 1941.10Arrested in Sorge Incident
- 1944.11.7Hanged at Sugamo Prison
Related historical events
From Shanghai reporting to advising Konoe's cabinet
In November 1928, Ozaki was sent to Shanghai as a correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun to cover China. He initially understood China's economic dependence primarily through British influence, but encounters with demonstrations denouncing Japan and boycotts of Japanese goods brought him to recognize Chinese nationalism directed against Japanese aggression. In Shanghai he made contact with Chinese Communist Party members, left-wing journalist Agnes Smedley, and Comintern figures; Smedley introduced him to Richard Sorge in 1930. While covering the First Shanghai Incident in 1932, he witnessed Japanese soldiers kill Chinese prisoners of war. After returning to Japan, he reconnected with Sorge in Tokyo.
Ozaki established himself through writing and analysis on Sino-Japanese relations. In 1937, Ryūnosuke Gotō recruited him to the Shōwa Kenkyūkai, a policy research group established by Fumimaro Konoe. From 1938, Ozaki took part in the small breakfast group with which Konoe discussed current affairs weekly. Ozaki thus participated in policy discussions while also passing information about policy to Sorge. At a senior government conference on July 2, 1941, Japan's expansion toward the Dutch East Indies and Singapore, rather than an attack on the Soviet Union, was supported. Ozaki backed this direction and informed Sorge that Japan sought to avoid war with the Soviet Union. This was intelligence on Japanese policy toward the USSR, but the movement of Soviet forces from Siberia or the outcome of the Battle of Moscow cannot be attributed to Ozaki's information alone.