ABSTRACT
Crucial to the development of the negative image of Japan was the intelligence that entered British hands through the activities of the British consular service in the region, the local Secret Intelligence Service network and the early activities of the Government Code and Cypher School. The British contingent was under the command of Brigadier-General Alfred Knox, who had formerly been the military attaché at the Petrograd embassy. The contradictory picture produced by the disagreements between the authorities in Vladivostok and the government in Tokyo left the Foreign Office in some confusion. Japan’s policy was to engage with this new regime and persuade it to accept the permanent existence of a non-communist buffer state that would control the south-eastern Siberian littoral. The Japanese presence in Siberia was thus seen in a similar way to the hold that it exercised over Manchuria both before and after the First World War.
