Sun Yat-sen's undecoded telegram (1916) is presented in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers". The basic principle is probably as follows: the Chinese characters in the plaintext are translated into four-digit codes according to a standard codebook; some manipulation may be applied to the figures (in some known examples, 111 was added); every pair of digits is converted to a consonant-vowel pair with a code condenser table; and the resulting sequence of figures are regrouped into ten-letter groups.
I presented two known code condensers at "Chinese Cryptography: 1871-1945". Although they belonged to Yamada Junzaburo, who supported Sun Yat-sen, I now found that an explanatory note, preserved in the Aichi University Archives, of encoding for correspondence between Yamada and Sun Yat-sen employed one of these (the one preserved in Guoshiguan).
When I applied it, the following character codes were revealed, but they do not decode well with the standard codebook.
2001 0174 5078 2348 7093 1963 4088 7850 5418 7709 5132 4463 ....
Subtraction of 111 yields:
1890 0063 4967 2237 6982 1852 3977 7739 5307 7598 5021 4352 ....
Again these result in a garble when decoded with the standard codebook.
Just in case, I tried the other of Yamada's known code condensers (the one preserved in the Michigan University).
Simple application leads to:
4037 3771 4692 8186 5095 6089 4494 9246 6780 1278....
Subtraction of 111 yields:
3926 3660 4581 8075 4984 5978 4383 9135 6669 1167....
Neither decodes to a meaningful plaintext.
I report these unsuccessful results as a starting point for further study.
Any leads now?
ReplyDeleteNot really.
ReplyDeleteSome years ago, I read that decoded telegrams are preserved in the US and can be collated with Sun's telegrams in print and that Martin Wilber "decoded" them. I could not pursue this further.
Quick googling now found one telegram from Sun Yat-sen to Eiichi Shibusawa (Shanghai, 20 November 1924).
https://eiichi.shibusawa.or.jp/denkishiryo/digital/main/index.php?DK380064k_text#DK380064k-0002
I confirmed the first few characters were based on the standard codebook
https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=OL6G2b0pu7wC&printsec=frontcover&hl=ja&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
without any further encryption.
(Telegram)
1148契 7059闊 1122多 1628年 1854恒
2037 7161 1653 6678 5113
7559 4634 5267 1783 4424
5907 3676 1580 2163 2164
5558 4391 4377 1766
(Raw Decoding)
契闊多年、恒懐雅度、遠聞高節、至慰私衷、特布極拳、曷禁神往
(Japanese translation)
多年拝芝ノ栄ヲ得ス候モ、常ニ御芳儀ヲ欽慕致居候、遥カニ御高節ヲ仰テ私衷ヲ慰シ居候、特ニ敬意ヲ表シ御機嫌ヲ伺フ