Japan's journey from Dark Ocean Society to Sixth Eye

THE white-only alliance of the Five Eyes has been mulling the question of admitting Japan as a member since at least 2018, but lately there is a growing perception that the delay is being caused by the alliance's in-built colonial view of Asian countries that is stuck in the past.

This is the first time in history that the Western intelligence community is considering including a non-Western country as a member. The origins of the Five Eyes - consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States - go back to World War II (WWII) and its anti-Soviet operations in the Cold War, but the alliance now believes that the time has come to expand membership to include other democratic countries.

The matter of making Japan a "Sixth Eye" is fraught with undercurrents. Wong Pak Nung, associate professor at the University of Bath, explains that the development of the Japanese intelligence system was restricted by the United States in the post-WWII period because British and American intelligence officials and scholars espoused a racist view of Asians. They believed that the "Japanese national psyche" was accurately described by former Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek, who once said: "Everyone Japanese, both male and female, is a born spy." This quote from Chiang appears in the book Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community by Richard J Samuels.