文密 The Wenmi code

References

Sources and credits

Numbers match the note calls in both articles. Web pages were consulted between 4 and 10 October 2026.

This investigation builds first on the article and repository by Daniel Bourdeau [1, 2] (transcriptions, decipherments, code), published under CC BY 4.0. The March–May 1916 texts have been re-read on the scans: see The 1916 condenser telegrams revisited.

It also owes a great deal to the work of S. Tomokiyo on his site Cryptiana [8, 9], devoted to the history of cryptography, Chinese and Japanese in particular: Yamada Junzaburō's “condenser” tables, and the references of the 1916 Japanese reports on the reading of Sun Yat-sen's telegrams (JACAR B03050730500, B03050738800).

Daniel Bourdeau also checked the G0 and Y0 grids independently, with his own transcriptions of the forms (0416b, 0489a), and pointed out to us that the 文密 prefix belongs to the Military Affairs Council channel only.

Our thanks to both.

Prior work

  1. Daniel Bourdeau, "Sun Yat-sen's circle on the wire, 1916–17", published 18 September 2026, updated 24 September 2026. CC BY 4.0.
  2. Daniel Bourdeau, repository dbourdeau/cyphersolver (transcriptions, notes, scripts famtest.py, hankow.py).

Primary sources (Japanese archives, JACAR)

  1. JACAR, Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, series 1.6.1.4-2-1-2 "特定人ノ発受郵便物取調", vol. 4: B03050089900 (images 0329–0387: telegrams 0348 of 23 June and 0386 of 30 June 1916), B03050090000 (images 0388–0446: 0406 of 12 July, 0415 of 18 July, 0416 of 19 July 1916; for the second channel, 0413 of 17 July and 0416a) and B03050090100 (images 0447–0501: 0455 of 13 September, 0462 of 30 September 1916; for the second channel, 0449, 0455a, 0467, 0473, 0489, 0494, 0496 and 0498, September to November 1916).
  2. JACAR B03050090200, same series, vol. 4: telegrams of March and June 1917, including 0509 and 0511 (Sun Yat-sen ↔ Dai Jitao, enciphered in another system, not broken).
  3. JACAR, same series, vol. 3: B03050089000 (29 April–22 May 1916, images 0006–0059), B03050089200 (2–9 June, images 0118–0173) and B03050089400 (14–17 June, images 0211–0264): newly deciphered telegrams (Telegrams page). And B03050088300 and B03050089100: condenser telegrams of March–May 1916 re-read on the scans (1916 condensers page).
  4. JACAR, same series, vol. 1: B03050087600 (8 January – 11 March 1915) and B03050087700 (March 1915 – February 1916): condenser telegrams and “Rosamonde” telegrams in enciphered English.
  5. Yang Tianshi 楊天石, “宋嘉樹與孫中山、宋慶齡的婚姻——讀宋嘉樹復孫中山英文函”, Bainian chao 百年潮, 2001, no. 12 (letters of Zhu Zhuowen, February 1915, and Charlie Soong, August 1915).
  6. Zhu Jiulin 朱玖琳, “從檔案文獻看孫中山與宋慶齡的婚姻”, Jindai Zhongguo 近代中國, vol. 25, 2016, pp. 50–70.
  7. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mme Sun Yat-sen (Soong Ching-ling), Penguin, 1986.
  8. JACAR, same series, vol. 2: B03050088000 (17 February – 9 March 1916), B03050088100 (10 – 22 March) and B03050088200 (23 – 28 March 1916): condenser telegrams earlier than those transcribed by D. Bourdeau.
  9. JACAR, Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, series “特定人ノ発受郵便物取調”, vol. 1: B03050087300, B03050087400, B03050087500 (1913–1914); vol. 2: B03050088500, B03050088600 (April 1916). Unpublished telegrams, 1913–1916: transcriptions by Claude incorporating Brice Dudout’s non-blind review; edition and publication checks with Codex. The Shanghai, Qingdao, San Francisco and Manila tables used in this batch were published by D. Bourdeau [1]; Laisaosang and New York were recovered in this investigation, as were Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Hsuweilin and Hong Kong. Provenance manifest: transcriptions, alignment hypotheses, selection criteria and SHA-256 hashes of readings and human reviews. Original PDFs are available through their JACAR references.
  10. JACAR B03050730500: report 政機密第26号 from the consul-general in Hankou, 瀬川淺之進, to Minister 石井菊次郎, 9 May 1916 ("−111" method).
  11. JACAR B03050738800: report 政機第28号, same author, 11 May 1916 ("reverse the four digits, then −111" method), with copies of the April 1916 telegrams.

Studies

  1. 承紅磊 (Cheng Honglei), "護國戰爭期間西南護國軍接受日本資金、武器考", 中山大學學報（社會科學版）, 2026, no. 4. Identifies 趙伸 among the resident commissioners of the 軍務院 in Japan; Mitsui / Taihei Kumiai arms contracts of 1916.
  2. S. Tomokiyo, "Chinese Cryptography: 1871–1945", Cryptiana website (sections "Superenciphered Code" and "Sun Yat-sen's Code Condenser? (1916)").
  3. S. Tomokiyo, "Sun Yat-sen's coded telegram (1916)", Cryptiana blog, December 2021.
  4. S. Tomokiyo, “Solution of Two Chinese Cipher Telegrams Archived in Japan (1916)”, Cryptiana website, September–October 2026 (including the formula of Huang Xing's three-kana code, 23 September 2026).
  5. D. Bourdeau, “Huang Xing to Lin Hu and Li Genyuan, 25 May 1916: a telegram in romanised kana”, 2026.

Data and tools

  1. Unicode Consortium, Unihan database, fields kTaiwanTelegraph and kMainlandTelegraph (Chinese telegraph code).
  2. Sunology (database of Sun Yat-sen's writings, 國父全集): 1916 telegrams in clear, 韻目代日 convention.
  3. Chinese Wikisource, Author: 孫文: language-model corpus (225 pages).
  4. OpenCC, simplified / traditional Chinese conversion and variants.
  5. jieba, Chinese word segmentation.
  6. Barış Kuzuoğlu, "Chinese Cryptography: The Chinese Nationalist Party and Intelligence Management, 1927–1949", Cryptologia, 42(6), 2018, pp. 514–539, doi:10.1080/01611194.2018.1449146 (background on Chinese codebooks).

Author, credits and licence

Brice Dudout led the investigation and read the ciphertext on the forms, in collaboration with Claude (Anthropic): Claude Opus 5.5 from session C14, Claude Fable 5.1 for the decipherment session (C31); the first sessions (C01–C13) were done with Codex (GPT-6.1 Sol). The articles were written together. Translations of the telegrams are working translations; unconfirmed information is flagged in the text.

Contact: Brice Dudout on LinkedIn.

Licence: Creative Commons BY 4.0, like Daniel Bourdeau's work — free reuse with credit "Brice Dudout, The Wenmi code, 2026". Exceptions (JACAR scan, portraits, derived data): see NOTICE.md (full text: LICENSE).