Malcolm Duncan Kennedy, O.B.E., (1895-1984), expert on Japanese affairs, had a varied career as army officer, businessman, civil servant and intelligence officer, during which he spent some two decades in Japan.

Kennedy was born in Edinburgh, though some of his earliest years were spent in Penang, and educated at Glenalmond School. During his army career he attended Sandhurst before serving in the First World War. After being severely wounded he convalesced for eighteen months before taking a course in Japanese at SOAS, having been posted to the Intelligence Section of Eastern Command Headquarters in London. From 1917 to 1920 he was a Military Language Officer in Japan, before returning to London where he worked in the Far Eastern Section of the War Office. The following year he was invalided out of the army and returned to Japan as a businessman. From 1925 until 1934 he took up a post in the Japanese Section of the Government Code and Cypher School, combining this with free-lance journalism. During World War II he continued to work there on Far Eastern Intelligence duties. At the end of the war he moved to the War Office, being based in the headquarters of the Inter-Service Organisation. From 1945 until his retirement in 1955 he worked for S.I.S. (MI6).

Jon Pardoe's doctoral thesis, 'Captain Malcolm Kennedy and Japan, 1917-1945', was based largely on the papers and diaries in the collection and was undertaken in the Centre for Japanese Studies, being presented in 1990. Dr Pardoe has since written an unpublished biography of Kennedy based on his thesis, and has also made available his transcripts of the diaries.