sharing it anywhere is fine, but please credit me.

There is a person I based Tsurumi on.

My father has an old friend whose name is Noda Masanobu. Despite having the same last name, they are not related; however this was the reason they became friends. It turns out that their grandfathers both came from the same military settlers village and were neighbors. Nevertheless, this story is not about that.

Noda Masanobu’s grandfather’s name was Hasegawa Tokushirou. He was a man full of mysteries who lived an eventful life.
Who was he?

He passed away in 1955 at the age of 72. After the funeral, his relatives found a couple of curious things within his possessions. Namely, an old résumé and a child’s pinky bone.

The résumé raised a lot of questions.

In 1903, one year before the Russo-Japanese war, he joined the 2nd Division in Niigata and received military training. However, he never went to war; in 1904, right in the midst of it, he suddenly got discharged, moved to Sapporo and started a photo studio in Tsukisamu district there shortly after. He was still in his early twenties.

Two years after he opened the studio in Tsukisamu, in 1907, for some reason he was running a photo studio in Grodekovo (modern day Pogranichny), Russia. It wasn’t a big city; just a small town close to the Chinese border.

According to the résumé, Tokushirou worked as a photographer there for 5 years, after which he abruptly left and went back to Japan, where he opened another photo studio in Asahikawa. He was in his late twenties. Subsequently he married and fathered Sumi, Masanobu’s mother.

His family was shocked upon finding that résumé. None of his relatives, including his wife and his daughter Sumi, had any idea that he worked as a photographer in Russia for 5 years. 

Tokushirou’s family wasn’t wealthy, yet he managed to open 4* different photo studios, including one in Russia, in his twenties alone. It was estimated that he would have needed over a billion yen for that, in today’s currency. Where did he get all that money?

(t/n: the translation isn’t wrong, it’s written as 4 in the book, even though I could only count 3. I don’t know the reason, I consulted with other people and I’m not reading it wrong; either a typo in the book or there were two studios in the same place somewhere, or he opened another one after Asahikawa but it wasn’t lingered on)

There’s a hint within the résumé.

The photo studio Tokushirou opened back in Tsukisamu was within walking distance from the base of the 25th Infantry Regiment of the 7th Division. The 7th Division was formed in Tsukisamu because of the First Sino-Japanese war, with the settler soldiers at its base. After that, the main forces of the Division, namely the 26th, 27th and 28th Regiments moved to Asahikawa, leaving the 25th one behind. 

We can assume the headquarters were left in Tsukisamu because the Northern Army headquarters in 1940s were located there, responsible for the protection of Sakhalin, Hokkaido and Tohoku. It was an important place.

The reason Masanobu got interested in Hasegawa Tokushirou in the first place was a book the director of the Vladivostok branch of Sumitomo Corporation showed him 20 years ago after reading the résumé’s contents. It’s titled “Memoirs of Ishimitsu Makiyo” and consists of records of an intelligence officer who was deployed to Russia before the Russo-Japanese war.

“Grandfather is the pride of our bloodline”, he said.

Why did he open a studio in Grodekovo, then? 

That town served as a dispatch location and hosted the Japanese garrison. Namely Tokushiro’s old nest, the 2nd Division of Niigata.

A few years back my (Noda Satoru’s) father and Masanobu showed the résumé to the director of the Hokuchin Memorial Museum, former First Lieutenant Minami Kazuhiro, and asked for his opinion. According to him:

- There is no doubt that the résumé was written for the military.

- Hasegawa Tokushirou enlisted at 20 and was discharged a year later, but instead of returning to Asahikawa, he opened a photo studio in Tsukisamu at age 22, which was unthinkable in those days. The army lost a lot of soldiers in the Russo-Japanese war, so it would have been impossible to be discharged under normal circumstances.

- The budget for the 7th Division was 1,000,000 yen (10,000,000,000 yen in today’s currency).

- After leaving Russia at age 29, it took him one year to get back to Japan, which he did through Germany, and he arrived together with the military officers responsible for security and intelligence gathering at embassies and consulates abroad. According to Minami, travelling overseas back then cost a huge amount of money. And since it took one year to come back, it would have cost tens of millions yen in today’s money. It would have been nearly impossible for a regular person under 30 to raise this amount of money by himself. The possibility that this money came from the military’s pocket as a secret expense is extremely high.

- There was a writing mistake in the résumé, reason Tokushirou never submitted it.

Tokushirou hasn’t disposed of the secret that even his family never knew about… Was it because that résumé was proof that he lived?

According to Sumi, one time before World War II, a Russian came by the photo studio in Asahikawa to sell bread. She heard her father addressing him in Russian out of the blue, which shocked her to say the least.

Whose was the bone found within Tokushirou’s belongings? Is it possible that it belonged to his child? Is it possible that he had a wife back in Grodekovo?

Masanobu sometimes flies to Grodekovo to search for any traces left by Tokushirou.

There is absolutely no proof that Tokushirou was a spy. Everything is based on circumstantial evidence.

However… the fact that there is no evidence is exactly what points to the possibility of him having been a spy the most.

Because you see, despite being a photographer, not a single photograph taken by him in those 5 years spent in Russia could be found.