Paul Blum

Paul Charles Blum (March 31, 1898 – August 16, 1981) was an American intelligence officer, businessman, writer and translator. He worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and its successor, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Early life and education Paul Charles Blum was born on March 31, 1898, in the Yamate foreign settlement of Yokohama, Japan. His father, Henri Blum, was a French Jew from the Alsace region of France, and was a distant relative of Prime Minister Léon Blum. His mother, Rose Blum ( Isaacs), was a Jewish American. Blum spent his childhood in Yokohama, graduated from Saint Joseph International School, and returned to France in 1912. After attending high school in Geneva, Blum graduated from Yale University. Blum was a fluent speaker of French.

When the United States entered into World War I, Blum enlisted in the United States Army Ambulance Service. In 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France and Blum moved to New York. He enrolled in Columbia University to study Japanese. Although he was raised in Yokohama, there were very few Westerners born in Japan at that time who understood Japanese, and Blum was not an exception. At Columbia, Blum befriended fellow student Donald Keene. In the summer of 1941, Blum and Keene lived together with others in a house in the mountains of North Carolina for private instruction in Japanese. During this time, Blum told Keene of his experience living in different countries.

In 1948, Blum came to Japan as an attaché for the United States Embassy in Japan and worked at the GHQ's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the . He was disguised as a diplomat, but was actually working as the first chief of the Japan branch of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This fact was kept secret at the time.

After arriving in Japan, Blum contacted , the European correspondent for The Asahi Shimbun during World War II and later its managing editor. He got in touch with Yoshirō Fujimura to establish The Jupitor Corporation , a trading company in Minami-Aoyama, Minato, Tokyo. Blum lived on the 2nd and 3rd floors of the company's building with Fujimura.

From approximately 1948, Blum started collecting intelligence by hosting the "Tuesday meetings", a series of roundtable discussions with leading Japanese figures and intellectuals at Tokyo's Imperial Hotel. In autumn 1949, Fujimura secured a large residence (a former Nabeshima clan residence) in Kamiyama-chō, Shibuya. The Tuesday meetings were moved there, held every second Tuesday of the month as an evening dinner. Blum reported the details of his activities to Washington every time. Shintarō Ryū of The Asahi Shimbun was the organizer of the meetings on the Japanese side. The gathered Japanese leaders included Shintarō Ryū, Shigeharu Matsumoto (chairman of the International House of Japan), Saburō Matsukata (managing director of Kyodo News), literary critic , agricultural economist Seiichi Tobata, political scientist , Minister of Education and (director of Shin-Etsu Chemical). They were referred to as the "eight samurai". In the background of these activities was that Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, had not permitted the CIA to operate in Japan, and Blum had very few subordinates. At times, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida walked from the nearby residence of to participate, and Blum was also invited to Yoshida's residence in Ōiso. The Tuesday meetings were dissolved after the Treaty of San Francisco came into effect in April 1952.

Retirement and death Blum donated his collection of Japanese-related literature to the Yokohama Archives of History. After the Tuesday meetings were dissolved, Blum retired from the CIA. In 1956, he sold the residence in Kamiyama-chō. He worked in the private sector following his retirement.

Blum was a well-known collector of Japan-related literature and of ukiyo-e. Following his retirement from the CIA, he also completed the English translation (co-translation with Makiko Yamamoto) of Seichō Matsumoto's novel Points and Lines. In 1978, he moved to New York as a result of "rising living expenses and taxes due to the strong yen". At the request of the city of Yokohama, Blum donated his collection of books to the Yokohama Archives of History, which the city was preparing to open. This donation is said to have been recommended by Donald Keene. Blum attended the museum's opening ceremony, but after returning to Japan he became ill and later died in New York on August 16, 1981. Blum hired four people, including Narimatsu, to work in his residence during the Tuesday meetings. Narumatsu retired from Blum's residence in 1953 due to the dissolution of the Tuesday meetings after the peace treaty came into effect. The same year, he opened the spaghetti specialty store in Tamura-chō, Tokyo with financial support from Blum and other acquaintances. The store was named by Blum.

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