Baron Ōtani Kikuzō was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army. Otani participated in the First Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War, World War I and the Russian Civil War. During the course of the latter he commanded the Vladivostok Expeditionary Force and became the formal commander of the Allied Siberian intervention. He was elevated to baron upon his retirement in 1920.

The Japanese Siberian Intervention of 1918–1922 was a dispatch of Japanese military forces to the Russian Maritime Provinces, as part of a larger effort by western powers and Japan to support White Russian forces against the Bolshevik Red Army during the Russian Civil War. The Japanese suffered 1,399 killed and another 1,717 deaths from disease. Japanese military forces occupied Russian cities and towns in the province of Primorsky Krai from 1918—1922.