The Japanese government has so far failed to give meaningful reassurances about the way in which the reactionary and potentially dangerous Designated Secrets Act, rammed through the Japanese Diet in December, will operate.
When I joined the British mission in Tokyo as a junior secretary in late 1951 I worked with officers who had personal experience of Japanese spying paranoia in Japan, Korea and Manchuria before the war. Their accounts were chilling.
I recently did some research and wrote a chapter* on the treatment of a number of British subjects in Japan who suffered from the Japanese suspicions toward foreigners in 1940. The Japanese military police (kempeitai) arrested the Reuters correspondent in Tokyo, Melville Cox, in 1940. He died in their custody on July 29, 1940, allegedly by throwing himself out of a window after inhumane treatment or by being thrown out by his captors. I could not find any evidence that he was involved in spying. At most he may have passed on to officials information generally available to members of the press.