The classified ad in the Dec. 6, 1933, edition of The Japan Advertiser is as unremarkable as it is straightforward: Wanted to Buy Ukiyo-e prints by old masters. Also English books on same subject. Urgently needed.
And yet these innocuous lines were the first coded contact made between two spies working in Japan for Russia — Yotoku Miyagi and Richard Sorge.
That fact alone gives them historical significance, and, more importantly, it means that in the mind of anyone even vaguely familiar with the cloak-and-dagger tale of "Spy Sorge" (as he is referred to in Japan), they are evocative far beyond their literal meaning.