Filching trade secrets to keep up with the competition is a device as old as buying and selling, and just as international. Nowhere does it flourish more than in Japan. An estimated 10,000 commercial spies honeycomb Japanese industry; in Tokyo alone there are 380 detective agencies that specialize in stealing corporate secrets. Last week industrial espionage achieved a new pinnacle of respectability in Japan with the opening of the Institute for Industrial Protection, a school avowedly established to train spies and counterspies for Japanese corporations.
Legal Theft. Japanese industrialists complain that they lose millions of dollars yearly because spies pass the plans for their secret new products to competitors. But there is no law in Japan against stealing trade secrets so long as no patents are violated, and products still in development are naturally not patented. "The only way to operate," says one
Japanese industrialist grimly, "is to tighten security and then spy right back on those who are spying on you."
The new school is intended to help companies do just that. Its president is cagey Tadashi Kurihara, 70, who learned the ins and outs of espionage as a career diplomat and onetime Ambassador to Turkey. On his nine-man staff are seasoned operatives from Japan's wartime intelligence services, including Yuzuru Fukamachi, 65, a onetime navy code specialist, and Tatsuo Furuya, 55, Japan's intelligence chief in wartime Shanghai. President Kurihara and his men claim to be down to earth about their job. Says Kurihara: "We wear trench coats for warmth, not atmosphere."
Measures & Countermeasures. The students—there are 50 in the first batch are mostly bright young executives in their late 20s. Their companies selected them to attend the institute, and also pay their tuition ($112 per student).
During the four-month course, the students will learn how to use dozens of complex espionage devices. They will be taught how to tap a telephone from a distance by beaming a ray from an infrared listening device into the receiver, and how to coat documents with a colorless dye that will penetrate even through leather gloves to blacken the fingers of anyone touching the document. "Naturally," purrs Old Shanghai Hand Furuya, "we have a counter-formula which will nullify the dye's effect, and only our students will know about it."
After graduation the students, since they all come from different companies, are likely to end up using the institute's measures and countermeasures on one another. Shrugs President Kurihara: "At least, all our students will have an equal chance. They will make worthy adversaries for each other."