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polaristranslations · 3 years

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The Fourth Box

■ ■

There's a psychological phenomenon known as the Capgras delusion.

It's when, one day, a person feels that their family member or friend has been switched out for an impostor—of course, this wasn't Lupin III, so there's no way that person's friend was switched out for someone else, but for whatever reason, they couldn't help but feel that way.

Even though they look the same on the outside, they seem different.

Even though they speak in the same way, they sound different.

Even though it's the same atmosphere, they feel different—that's the Capgras delusion.

If that's the case, then I, this Kurokami Medaka may have always—or perhaps, from the very beginning—felt that way towards my brother, Kurokami Maguro. Is this person really my brother? Is it really true that this person is my brother? That's how I felt.

Although, according to Zenkichi, my brother and I resemble each other.

"If you really hate Maguro-san, Medaka-chan, then I would think that's due to hating others that are similar to you. You probably don't want to recognize it, but personally the differences between you two are paper-thin. There's just barely a difference."

Just barely.

Well, rather than not wanting to recognize this opinion of Zenkichi's, it was more like I didn't recognize it at all, but the words "just barely", and those words only, seemed to be surprisingly fitting towards us siblings.

I didn't know about paper-thin, though.

Perhaps if that paper was twofold.

First off, I felt that my brother's existence was just barely on the edge, and secondly, the relationship between my brother and I was just barely on the edge—well, this was a story about after the collapse of Kumagawa Misogi's Student Council, after everything ended on that summer break, but I left my parents' home.

I left my parents' home, and I became independent.

Without taking a penny of the allowance provided by the Kurokami family, I began living independently—one of the big reasons that I entered Hakoniwa Academy was that, as a special scholarship student, I would be exempt from tuition fees.

What?

What did you say, Torai Kudaki?

You're saying that someone like me would be exempt from tuition fees in most schools?

Haha, it's an honor to be overestimated like that.

But that isn't true at all—because I was a bit of a problem child.

I was a problem child in both elementary school and in middle school—even if you took away the fact that I was a scholarship student, it's hard to believe that there would be any school to take me in but Hakoniwa Academy.

After all, Hakoniwa Academy's Class 13 is that sort of class.

That's what I think, anyway.

Incidentally, my brother had also been in Hakoniwa Academy's Class 13—just from that, you'll be able to find more similarities between my brother and I, but the bizarre aspect of my brother was that he quit that Class 13 partway through.

In other words, he dropped out.

And now, he works as the manager of the old school building.

If you think about it, it's quite the unreasonable life—there's no thought or consistency behind it. And if you add the fact that he worked as the Hakobune Middle School Student Council Executive Committee's secretary in his middle school days, then it really starts making no sense at all.

I don't really have any, you know?

Things that "make no sense at all", that is.

It seemed that they've been playing around again recently, but the intimate combination of Kumagawa Misogi and Kurokami Maguro was, from my point of view, something of a nightmare—no, not just to me, but to anyone who looked, it was something of a nightmare.

It might not click to anyone who only knows the present combination of my thornless brother and Kumagawa who's been mellowed out thanks to Tachiarai-senpai, but the combination of the past was something that was shocking and feared by the entire student body of Hakobune Middle School.

Well, at this point in time, I knew nothing of President Kumagawa or Secretary Maguro—but, well, it seemed quite appropriate to make my brother into the Secretary. As a magician who wields the magic known as analysis, my brother had been appointed with the role of record-keeper—however, I would only learn this after the fact, but this appointment had not actually been made by Kumagawa himself.

Kumagawa himself wasn't the kind of person to put the right person in the right place.

It was something I could tell from him appointing me as Treasurer.

Since, according to Zenkichi, I didn't have the disposition to be Treasurer at all—that's why, when I became the Student Council President at Hakoniwa Academy, I approached Kikaijima Mogana, a professional, for the Treasurer position.

Ah, I know.

Why don't I mention this, while I'm at it?

This isn't about Kikaijima Mogana, but about Akune Kouki—the relationship between Akune Kouki and Kurokami Maguro. The Hakobune Middle School's 66th Generation Student Council Executive Committee's Secretary, Kurokami Maguro, and the Hakoniwa Academy's 98th Generation Student Council Executive Committee's Secretary, Akune Kouki.

In terms of their personalities, it seemed they didn't mesh very well.

To be clear.

I'll get into the specifics later, but in the end, the number of people that my brother could "get along with" in terms of general values was surprisingly limited—even though he has such good manners and is always smiling, I guess everyone still feels something from him.

"That person," Akune Kouki had said.

Oh, this was something he said just the other day.

"Maguro-san doesn't seem to have any conception of good or evil—it might be natural for him as an analyst, but it seems like he only feels what he sees as he sees it. How should I put it? Perhaps I should say, he doesn't associate ideas with other ideas. For example, he may look at the sky and see that it's blue, but he won't think of it as pretty. Something like that. There's no doubt that he's not a bad person, but he's absolutely not a good person either—rather than good or evil, it's like he doesn't know right or wrong. That's the kind of person I think he is—and I imagine he's been like that in the past, as well."

Indeed.

As expected, he has an exceptional way of putting things—though that may be usual for him.

Of course, his way of looking at my brother wasn't exactly the same as mine, and if anything, I had some objections to his words from where I stood, but because he didn't know good or evil—because he had no conception of good or evil—perhaps that was why he was a good match for Kumagawa Misogi, who ruined both the good and the evil at the same time.

Although, that could also apply to Miyakonojou Oudo.

In the end, it seemed my brother could only get along with guys like those.

In other words—for me.

For a person like Kurokami Medaka, it seemed my brother wouldn't be able to get along with her for the rest of their lives.

■ ■

The Student Council office that my brother took me to was empty.

It seemed that the members wouldn't show up here on a regular basis after school—that was yet another difference between here and Hakoniwa Academy's Student Council. At this point, if I were to enumerate all the differences between Hakobune Middle School's Student Council and Hakoniwa Academy's Student Council, there would be no end to it.

It was harder to find the points they had in common.

Even though they both held the name of Student Council, perhaps it was better to think of them as completely different beings—in terms of animals, it would be as if their appearances were similar, but the genus or species was completely different.

There were animals that intentionally camouflaged themselves to look like other animals, though—with that in mind, I could come up with a new theory. The organization with Kumagawa Misogi at its summit was not a Student Council Executive Committee, but an organization that had simply camouflaged itself as such—well, that seemed more like something to come from President Kumagawa, but regardless of what was the truth, it was the same either way.

It was all in the past, anyway.

It wasn't as if anything would change if we tried to figure out the truth—although if there was something that would change, even the tiniest something that would change, I'm still not sure I would spare the effort to do so.

At any rate, there was no one in the Student Council office after school.

I'd been so sure that President Kumagawa would be there, so it felt a bit anticlimactic. I'd come expecting that it would be a conversation between President Kumagawa, my brother, and me—no, rather than anticlimactic, you could say I felt a sense of danger.

Just think about it.

It was just me and my brother in an otherwise empty room, you know?

I definitely felt a sense of danger at something like this—I wasn't the type of person to run from a battle, but a situation like this was something that made me want to run away.

But, I couldn't run away.

And I couldn't let my brother escape, either.

I had to ask.

"Why?"

I said.

Keeping my feelings in check—bracing myself, trying not to be conscious of the fact that the other person was family.

"Why are you doing something like being a member of the Student Council, onii-sama?"

My brother repeated my words in an affected manner.

And he took his seat at a desk to the right, most likely the desk of the Secretary position.

"What a strange thing to ask, Medaka-chan."

"It isn't that strange. As your sister, I'm simply worried about my brother."

This was a big lie.

If anything, what I was worried about was Hakobune Middle School, in which my brother worked as a member of the Student Council. Yes, to be clear, at this point in time, I was more cautious about my own brother than of Kumagawa Misogi, commonly referred to as "the Minus that crawls from chaos".

I was cautious.

And I regarded him as dangerous.

Just between us, I've seen a lot of people up close, produced by my brother's analysis and gone astray—in terms of having caused people to go astray, I couldn't exactly speak ill of others, but in the case of my brother, it was worse because he caused people to go astray intentionally.

How should I put this—you've heard of the story "Yam Gruel", right?

It's a story about feeding as much yam gruel as possible to a person who likes yam gruel—in terms of ideas, what my brother is doing is fundamentally similar. How should I put it? It's like giving humans a disproportionate amount of power—I'm not sure if this is an appropriate comparison, but what do you think would happen if you used a time machine to go back a thousand years ago and gave the people there cell phones?

It's hard to predict what would happen, right?

It would certainly improve their level of civilization, but it's easy to realize that it won't be just good things that happen—there would definitely be things that are lost or broken. Progressing in one bound without following the proper order would surely cause a distortion somewhere.

My brother is a person that does things like that.

He ends up doing things like that.

That must be why he was employed as the supervisor of the Flask Plan—but, because he was nothing but that sort of person, I suppose I could praise my brother a bit for not getting swallowed up by the Flask Plan itself.

However, three years ago.

When I was in middle school, I didn't have the leeway to think those thoughts.

I didn't have a shred of the feelings of wanting to praise my brother—not a sliver. If anything, I held nothing but hostility towards him. Well... I'd like you to think that it was a difficult age for me.

As for the rest.

It would be my unreasonable... My excessive faith in my brother. Although it might sound a bit unnatural to suddenly bring up the word faith at this stage—but my feelings were such that I knew that he would not tremble in the slightest even if I went at him seriously, even if I hit him seriously.

Facing him with all his might.

That was what the sister thought was the correct way to handle her brother—and even now, I still do think that to some extent. Compared to his middle school days, my brother has mellowed out a bit, but some discretion is still necessary in regards to him.

"Worried, huh? Ah, I understand, Medaka-chan. You're always worried about your dearly beloved brother, aren't you?—but that's why what you're asking is so strange. After all, aren't you going to become a member of this very Student Council, too? I've heard from Kumagawa-kun."

"...I wouldn't have agreed to that invitation if I had known in advance that you were a member, onii-sama."

No.

Had I even agreed to his words in the first place?

Even if I had nodded along, had I truly agreed?

To be honest, it felt like it had gradually moved along in that direction until things were suddenly decided... Ultimately, it may seem as if I had decided it by myself, but how was it really?

"Onii-sama, were you also invited by President Kumagawa?"

"Mm, how should I explain it—how far should I explain it?"

"Well, right now, Medaka-chan, there are things that you should know and things that you shouldn't. For the sake of your future."

"Those are words that don't seem very like you—isn't it your principle to draw out 100% of your target's power?"

"I'm saying that there's information that could be bothersome in drawing out 100% of that power. For example, just because a baby has good muscles, you wouldn't start feeding it protein, right?"

"So am I a baby to you, onii-sama?"

"That wasn't what I was trying to say... You shouldn't snap at me like that. Although, if you want, you're free to bite at me for real."

In that way, my brother dodged the question.

This time wasn't particularly special. My conversations with my brother usually went like this—he would treat me like a kid, and he wouldn't respond to me decently.

That sort of behavior.

That brother of mine probably never once thought about how much it hurt me.

"Well, if you don't like that comparison, then I'll take it back. But with that, just know that I don't necessarily think that you joining the Student Council is a good thing, Medaka-chan."

That was what my brother said.

His expression was the usual grin.

Well, even if I said it was the usual, it might not get across to you—but at any rate, he did not sound particularly serious.

"If it's true that you wouldn't have joined the Student Council Executive Committee if you'd known that I was a part of it, then I really should have publicized that information—instead of hiding it."

"So you did hide it. I thought it was weird that I didn't know about something like that."

"Well, Medaka-chan, you don't have much interest in others, so even if I didn't hide it, I figure you wouldn't have known about it anyway."

"I don't have much interest in others? Don't say something so stupid. I was born to be of use to other people, to strangers."

"You're saying something pretty incredible, huh."

Ahaha, laughed my brother.

It was as if my words didn't reach him at all.

I can more or less understand my brother's state of mind as I am now, but at the time, it was nothing but aggravating. Why was it so hard to understand each other despite being siblings? Why were we so incompatible? That was what I thought.

Perhaps that was a part of my idealism.

That siblings should understand each other.

That they should be able to get along.

Because my mind was rooted in such thinking, when it didn't match the world, I felt a sense of discrepancy—I was living by carrying that sort of imaginary stress on my shoulders, so I can understand now why Zenkichi was worried about me.

Thinking about it, I do regret it.

If only I had realized three years ago.

If so, at the very least, I wouldn't have accepted President Kumagawa's invitation to become the Treasurer of Hakobune Middle School's Student Council Executive Committee.

"In that case, I was born to show love towards my little sister."

My brother laughed.

Though rather than laughing, it seemed more like he was ridiculing me.

"Medaka-chan. For you, how much does the world encompass?"

"Huh?"

I was bewildered at the sudden question.

Although, it was rare that I wasn't bewildered when it came to talking with my brother.

"What do you mean by that? The world?"

"Yes, the world. When you hear the phrase 'the world', Medaka-chan, where do you think that is? When you say the phrase 'the world', how many meters is the radius you're referring to?"

"......"

I couldn't figure out the intention behind his question.

It was probably some sort of psychology test, so it was probably something I could answer with whatever came to mind, but I could only assume that such things varied from time to time.

"...I don't really see a meaning to trying to perceive the range of the world, but if I have to answer, wouldn't the world refer to everything in this world? Basically—the greatest range possible. That's what I perceive as the world."

"As I expected. Since you are greedy, after all."

"Greedy?"

Yet another awful word.

Even for a lack of restraint around family members, it was pretty terrible.

"What about me is greedy?"

"Ultimately, the world is limited to the range which you can affect—so when you imagine everything in this world, that's no different from saying that you want to make everything in this world yours."

In my eyes, you're no different from a Great Demon Lord scheming for world domination, said my brother.

A Great Demon Lord, he said.

For lack of a better word, that was awful.

That was what I thought, but I learned afterwards that he was simply likening me to an RPG or some other game. It was an apt metaphor for my brother, whose hobby—or perhaps doctrine—was to raise the level of game characters to level 99, so to speak, but since I didn't have that level of knowledge about games, I didn't realize it.

"If we take it there, then Kumagawa-kun is different. He's the complete opposite of you, Medaka-chan."

"How is it different? The way he thinks, and the way I think?"

My state of mind wasn't exactly calm anymore, but I still wanted to hear my brother's opinion on the matter.

Kumagawa Misogi.

That unidentifiable, quite the unidentifiable boy. How had my brother analyzed him?—that was what I'd come to ask in the first place.

"Medaka-chan. If you're trying to conquer the world."

Without putting on airs, without trying to sound meaningful.

My brother spoke casually.

"Kumagawa-kun—wants to destroy the world."

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intelandsecurity · 6 years

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THE UNTOLD STORY OF JAPAN’S SECRET SPY AGENCY

EVERY WEEK IN Tokyo’s Ichigaya district, about three miles northeast of the bright neon lights and swarming crowds in the heart of Shibuya, a driver quietly parks a black sedan-style car outside a gray office building. Before setting off on a short, 10-minute drive south, he picks up a passenger who is carrying an important package: top-secret intelligence reports, destined for the desks of the prime minister’s closest advisers.

Known only as “C1,” the office building is located inside a high-security compound that houses Japan’s Ministry of Defense. But it is not an ordinary military facility – it is a secret spy agency headquarters for the Directorate for Signals Intelligence, Japan’s version of the National Security Agency.

The directorate has a history that dates back to the 1950s; its role is to eavesdrop on communications. But its operations remain so highly classified that the Japanese government has disclosed little about its work – even the location of its headquarters. Most Japanese officials, except for a select few of the prime minister’s inner circle, are kept in the dark about the directorate’s activities, which are regulated by a limited legal framework and not subject to any independent oversight.

Now, a new investigation by the Japanese broadcaster NHK — produced in collaboration with The Intercept — reveals, for the first time, details about the inner workings of Japan’s opaque spy community. Based on classified documents and interviews with current and former officials familiar with the agency’s intelligence work, the investigation shines light on a previously undisclosed internet surveillance program and a spy hub in the south of Japan that is used to monitor phone calls and emails passing across communications satellites.

Night view of the C1 building, inside Japan’s Ministry of Defense compound in Ichigaya.

According to the current and former officials, the Directorate for Signals Intelligence, or DFS, employs about 1,700 people and has at least six surveillance facilities that eavesdrop around the clock on phone calls, emails, and other communications. (The NSA, in comparison, has said it has a workforce of more than 30,000 and Britain’s signals intelligence agency claims more than 6,000 staff.) The communications collected at the spy facilities are sent back to analysts who work inside the C1 building, which has four underground floors and eight above ground.

“Very few people know what the DFS is doing and can enter the building,” according to an active-duty official with knowledge of the directorate’s operations, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The official agreed to share details about the directorate after The Intercept and NHK last year revealed that the spy agency had obtained a mass surveillance system called XKEYSCORE, which is used to sift through copies of people’s emails, online chats, internet browsing histories, and information about social media activity. The official said that they believed the directorate’s use of XKEYSCORE was “not permissible” under the Japanese Constitution, which protects people’s right to privacy.

The official believed the directorate’s use of XKEYSCORE was “not permissible” under the Japanese Constitution.

The directorate – known in Japanese as the “Denpa-Bu,” meaning “electromagnetic wave section” – currently has 11 different departments, each focused on a different subject, such as information analysis, public safety and security, and cryptography. However, the departments are kept separate from each other and there is limited communication between them, the active-duty official said. Each department in the C1 building has a different lock installed on the rooms it uses, and these can only be accessed by a select group of people who have the appropriate security clearance, access codes, and identification. The directorate operates as the largest arm of Japan’s Defense Intelligence Agency, which has other divisions focused on, for example, analyzing satellite imagery, sources said.

Atsushi Miyata, who between 1987 and 2005 worked with the directorate and the Ministry of Defense, said that his work for the spy agency had involved monitoring neighboring countries, such as North Korea, and their military activities. But the agency’s culture of intense secrecy meant that it was reluctant to share information it collected with other elements of the Japanese government. “They did not share the data inside of [the] Defense Ministry properly,” said Miyata. “Even inside of the Defense Ministry, the report was not put on the table. So the people did not understand what we were doing.”

The directorate is accomplished at conducting surveillance, but has a tendency to be excessively secretive about its work, according to classified documents The Intercept disclosed last year. A 2008 NSA memo described its Japanese counterparts as being “still caught in a Cold War way of doing business” and “rather stove-piped.” The U.S. continues to work closely with Japan’s intelligence community, however, and collaborates with the country to monitor the communications of countries across Asia.

ABOUT 700 MILES southwest of Tokyo, there are two small towns called Tachiarai and Chikuzen, which have a combined population of about 44,000 people. Japan’s military, known as the Self-Defense Forces, has a base situated on a patch of grassy farmland in between the towns. But the base is not used to train soldiers. It is one of the country’s most important spy hubs.

For years, the large antennae inside the secure compound, which are concealed underneath what look like giant golf balls, attracted concerns from local residents who were worried that the powerful radio waves they emitted might damage their health or interfere with their televisions. The Japanese government sent senior officials to reassure the locals that there would be no problems, and the government began paying the Chikuzen council an annual fee of about $100,000 as compensation for the disturbance caused by the base. But the function of the antennae was never revealed.

A top-secret document from the directorate offers unprecedented insight into some of the Tachiarai base’s activities. The document – an English-language PowerPoint presentation – appears to have been shared with the NSA during a meeting in February 2013, at which the Japanese spy agency’s then-deputy director was scheduled to discuss intelligence-gathering issues with his American counterparts. The presentation was contained in the archive of classified files provided to The Intercept by Edward Snowden. No internal documents from Japan’s surveillance agency have ever been publicly disclosed before.

According to the presentation, Japan has used Tachiarai for a covert internet surveillance program code-named MALLARD. As of mid-2012, the base was using its antennae to monitor communications passing across satellites. Each week, it collected records about some 200,000 internet sessions, which were then being stored and analyzed for a period of two months. Between December 2012 and January 2013, Tachiarai began using the surveillance technology to collect information about potential cyberattacks. As a result, its data collection rapidly increased, and it began sweeping up information about 500,000 internet sessions every hour – 12 million every day. Despite this, the directorate indicated that it was only able to detect a single email that was linked to an apparent cyberattack. It struggled to cope with the amount of data it was harvesting and asked the NSA for help. “We would like to see processing procedure which the U.S. side employs in order not to affect traditional SIGINT collection,” the directorate told the NSA, “and would appreciate your technical assistance.”

“Even inside of the Defense Ministry, the people did not understand what we were doing.”

Chris Augustine, a spokesperson for the NSA, declined to answer questions about the agency’s cooperation with Japan, saying in a statement that he would “neither confirm nor deny information concerning potential relationships with foreign intelligence services.” He added: “Any cooperation among intelligence services is conducted lawfully, in a manner that mutually strengthens national security.”

The directorate’s work at Tachiarai appears to focus on monitoring the activities of foreign countries in the region. It is unclear whether it collects Japanese citizens’ communications, either deliberately or incidentally, through dragnet programs like MALLARD. The law in Japan prohibits wiretapping landlines without a court order, but monitoring communications as they are being transmitted wirelessly across satellites is a gray area, Japanese legal experts say, because there are no legal precedents in the country that place limitations upon that kind of surveillance, though there is a general right to privacy outlined in the constitution.

According to Richard Tanter, a professor at the University of Melbourne who specializes in researching government surveillance capabilities, more than 200 satellites are “visible” from Tachiarai, meaning the base can intercept communications and data passing between them using its surveillance systems. Of the 200-plus satellites, said Tanter, at least 30 are Chinese and potential targets for ongoing surveillance. Moreover, he added, “satellites owned or operated by Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, and even the United States or European states may be targeted” by the Tachiarai facility.

Snowden, who worked at a U.S. military base in Japan as an NSA contractor between 2009 and 2012, told The Intercept that Japanese spies appeared to have targeted “entire internet service providers, not just any one customer.” Referencing the MALLARD program, he said that there were not “500,000 terrorist communications happening in one year, much less one hour. … Is this authorized in law in a way that’s well-understood, that’s well-regulated, to make sure they are only targeting bad guys and not simply everything that they see?”

A spokesperson for Japan’s Ministry of Defense refused to discuss MALLARD, but said that the country’s “information-gathering activities” are necessary for national security and “done in compliance with laws and regulations.” The spokesperson acknowledged that Japan has “offices throughout the country” that are intercepting communications; however, he insisted that the surveillance is focused on military activities and “cyberthreats” and is “not collecting the general public’s information.” When pressed to explain how the country’s spy systems distinguish ordinary people’s communications from those related to threats, the spokesperson would not provide details on the grounds that doing so “may be a hindrance to effective future information activities.”

A woman works on her laptop on the viewing platform of the Tokyo Skytree on March 29, 2018, in Tokyo, Japan.

IN OCTOBER 2013, the Directorate for Signals Intelligence was planning to launch an operation aimed at what it described as the “Anonymous internet,” according to the 2013 presentation. This suggests that the directorate wanted to collect data about people’s usage of privacy tools such as Tor, which allows people to mask their computer’s IP address while they browse the internet. Tor is often used by journalists and dissidents to evade government surveillance; however, it is also used by child abusers and other criminals to plan or carry out illegal acts. In April 2013, it was reported that Japanese police were urging internet service providers to find ways to block people who were using Tor to commit crimes. In 2012, the country’s police investigators were repeatedly thwarted by a hacker known as the “Demon Killer,” who posted a series of death threats online. The hacker used Tor to successfully evade detection for seven months, which was a major source of embarrassment for Japanese police — and likely fueled demand for new surveillance capabilities.

Snowden told The Intercept that Japanese spies appeared have targeted “entire internet service providers, not just any one customer.”

The directorate’s activities at Tachiarai and elsewhere are aided by an organization called J6, which is a specialist technical unit connected to Japan’s Ministry of Defense, according to sources familiar with its operations. However, the cooperation between the directorate and J6 has been inhibited by the extreme secrecy that is pervasive within the Japanese government, with each agency apparently reluctant to open up to the other about its respective capabilities. In the 2013 presentation, Japanese officials from the directorate described J6’s role to the NSA, but admitted that they had relied on “assumptions” to do so, because “J6 function is not disclosed to us.”

According to the presentation, the directorate’s role is to carry out surveillance and analyze intelligence. The role of J6 includes analyzing malware and developing countermeasures – such as firewalls – to prevent hacks of Japanese computer systems. A third organization, called the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Organization, or CIRO, is the ultimate beneficiary of intelligence that is collected. Headed by a powerful figure named Shigeru Kitamura, it oversees the work of both the directorate and J6 and is connected to the prime minister’s office, based out of a building known as “H20,” a short walk from the prime minister’s official residence in Tokyo’s Chiyoda district.

Between 2000 and 2005, prior to development of the MALLARD internet surveillance program, expansion work took place at the Tachiarai facility. At that time, the then-town council chair, Hitoshi Miyahara, was shown a map of the construction plans, which revealed that a tunnel was being built below the base. Miyahara was allowed to visit the construction site, he said, but was prevented from entering the underground area. The current town council chair, Tsutomu Yano, had a similar experience. He visited the facility about four years ago and was shown around a gymnasium, a cafeteria, and a conference room. He was prevented from accessing the underground tunnel and a space he was told was used for “communications.” Yano said he repeatedly questioned the Self-Defense Forces about the Tachiarai facility’s function. But he never received any answers.

Ed Noguchi contributed reporting and translation.

Documents

Documents published with this article:

DFS briefing Feb 2013

Cyber paper Japan DFS

DFS and NSA partnership

#intelligence

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