Hitori Kumagai  ', born ' on 10 June 1936, is a Japanese author and whistleblower who uncovered the Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal. Kumagai was born in Onomichi, Hiroshima. In 1963, he graduated from the Russian-language department of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Fuchū. After graduation, Kumagai worked for the Wako Koeki trading company,(和光交易株式会社) which specialized in collaborating with communist countries. In October 1980, the KGB told a Wako executive in Moscow they were looking for "a robot which builds [propeller] screws for large vessels." Wako created a connection to the Toshiba Machine Corporation, (東芝機械株式会社) which also specialized in collaborating with communist countries. The company began talks with the KGB in late December 1980, and the spy agency requested four sets of nine-axis machine tools and four sets of five-axis tools—violating Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) regulations for certain machine tools. Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) advised the violation. The Itochu Corporation worked with Wako and Toshiba Machine, shifting responsibility for the violation to the other two companies in an agreement signed on 24 April 1981. Shinto Jitsugyo Company (株式会社進展実業), which also specialized in working with communist countries, was a subsidiary of Itochu and the Shinko Seiki Company (神港精機株式会社). It violated CoCom regulations, exported germanium transistor production facilities to the Soviet Union. Another Itochu subsidiary, Ataka and Company (安宅産業株式会社), also worked with communist countries to export a set of three-axis machine tools. The numerical control machine tool was produced by Kongsberg Gruppen in Norway. They obtained export permission by claiming that it had two axes and delivered it to Japan, where it was re-exported to the Soviet Union. Its software later followed the same path. The Soviet ship carrying the first piece of contraband departed from Tokyo Bay, passed through the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea, and arrived in Leningrad via the Arctic Ocean in the spring of 1983.