This study is more than a book about the equipment used by Japanese Imperial forces during World War II and by the United States afterwards. Japanese Spy Gear and Special Weapons is about the men and women who invented and made the weapons. Equally, it’s about Japan’s technological ability to quickly catch up to the West on the eve of the Second World War.
Stephen C Mercado has produced another fine work about a side of Japan we do not often get to see ー the intelligence side. In this case, Mercado’s book, published by Pen and Sword Military in the United Kingdom, is about the scientists and technicians. It’s also about ordinary Japanese, who were involved in the development and manufacture of special weapons and equipment used against the Allies during World War II.
Interestingly, the book also discusses how the United States sought to utilize these skills, insights, and capabilities in the early years of the Cold War against the Communist bloc. They were especially applicable to the Soviet Union, People’s Republic of China, and North Korea.
Researching the Book
This is a field Mercado, an Asian specialist formerly with the Central Intelligence Agency, knows intimately. He is the author of an earlier volume on a related subject, The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army’s Elite Intelligence School (Brassey’s, 2002). Additionally, his numerous articles and book reviews on intelligence matters are all open source. He has worked closely with Japanese documents over the course of his career and has focused his academic writings on Japan’s prewar and wartime periods.
Importantly, he has visited the places he writes about and interviewed many of those involved. It was, in particular, this approach that drew me to his writings.
His factual, non-judgmental approach to writing, essentially looking at it from the Japanese perspective, and well-documented, often annotated footnotes were also highly refreshing.
Storage area for materials collected by the Tokyo City Disinfection Office. To secure resources for making weapons and ammunition, government offices and public organizations led metal collection efforts. (Published in Shashin Shuho, April 23, 1941.)
Noborito Research Institute
The main focus of the book is the Noborito Research Institute. Its remnants can be found at Meiji University in Yokohama. Today, thanks to the efforts of the former staff of the laboratory, there is a museum with details of the special weapons work conducted there and elsewhere, including the morally troubling experiments on animals and human prisoners.
Mercado traces the history of the institute. In doing so, he found there is a clear relationship between Japan’s standing vis-à-vis its potential or actual enemies and the time, attention, and funding it found necessary to devote to “unconventional operations,” including “biological and chemical weapons.” These are fields that Japan realized it was well behind the West after World War I (pp 25-26).
One of the weapons Noborito tried to develop was a “death ray.” Early on, both the US and Britain had tried to develop one, but they gave up, due to the need for a “great power plant to implement it.” Instead, they focused on the development of radar (p 27).
In contrast, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) saw radar ー ie, “communications and electrical equipment” ー as “defensive” in nature. Instead, they sought something “more offensive” (Ibid). In other words, the IJA sought the ability to use electric waves to stop engines and kill the enemy in the open. It was a “vision…more fantastical than practical” (p 28).
Postwar Cooperation
This pressure increased as time went on. “As Japanese military leaders prepared for an anticipated decisive battle in Japan’s home islands,” Mercado wrote, “officers and technicians of the Noborito Research Institute were preparing new sites in the mountainous interior of Central Japan for developing new weapons and producing materials for the fighting planned for late 1945” (p 68). After the war, large caches of weapons, ammunition, and other materials were found by Allied forces, often with the help of Noborito’s personnel.
There were also other areas — inks, currency counterfeiting, uniform copying, forged passports, and other documents. These were important aspects of the research and development work there, each with varying degrees of success. In recognition of the skills possessed at Noborito, many of its personnel were hired by the American military. This continued for many years afterwards, some even moving to the United States.
Much of the book is also devoted to chapters on postwar cooperation and the postwar lives of the laboratory’s personnel.
How Mercado Presents the Book
Japanese Spy Gear and Special Weapons is divided into 10 chapters. Along with a helpful list of abbreviations and acronyms, it also has some two dozen photos.
In order, the chapters are:
1 Building Noborito (1)
2 Developing a Death Ray (16)
3 Preparing Biological Weapons (29)
4 Bombing America by Balloon (42)
5 Counterfeiting Currencies, Forging Documents (55)
6 Withdrawing for Battle, Destroying Evidence (68)
7 Dealing With the Victors in Occupied Japan and Korea (83)
8 Working With the Americans (99)
9 Rebuilding Japan (111)
10 Remembering Noborito (124)
Conclusion
Mercado’s calm and careful storytelling is seen throughout the book. Writing in the context of the above death ray, “Seeking to conduct cutting-edge research and development under wartime conditions,” he noted, “must have put tremendous pressure on Noborito personnel” (p 27).
Mercado described a comment by the museum curator that “developers of spy gear and special weapons have harnessed science and technology for projects that ‘pose major problems in terms of humanity and international law.” In response, the author added that “such is the outcome when nations struggle for power in a world without effective international rules or the collective means to enforce them” (p 133).
Book cover (courtesy of Pen and Sword Books, publisher)
About the Book
Title: Japanese Spy Gear and Special Weapons: How Noborito’s Scientists and Technicians Served in the Second World War and the Cold War
Author: Stephen C Mercado
Publisher: Pen & Sword Military (August 4, 2025 by the publisher, with release in the United States on October 30)
ISBN: 9781036107987
For additional information and to acquire the book: See the publisher’s website or reviews on online book sellers such as Amazon.
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Reviewed by: Robert D Eldridge, PhD
Dr Eldridge is a former political advisor to the US Marine Corps in Japan and author of numerous books on Japanese political and diplomatic history.
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