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Opium Empire: Japanese Imperialism and Drug Trafficking in Asia, 1895-1945, The

Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2002 by Mamola, Claire

Jennings, John M. The Opium Empire: Japanese Imperialism and Drug Trafficking in Asia, 1895-1945. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing, 1997. 176 pp.

John Jennings's interest in the political, social, and economic consequences of drug abuse arises from these issues being less explored aspects of Japanese imperialism in Asia compared to the "comfort women" issue. Jennings observes that Japan's emergence as an imperial power necessitated policies regarding the use of and trafficking in opium and other derivative narcotics. Beginning with the 1895 annexation of Taiwan and throughout the fifty years that followed, the Japanese rulers had to create drug policies for that island as well as Korea and their territories in China and Southeast Asia. Jennings found this issue to be worthy of investigation even though the International Military Tribunal for the Far East had found Japan guilty of the war crime of deliberately promoting drug use among its conquered populations in order to demoralize them. He sees this issue as a metaphor for investigating Japanese imperialism in Asia, not a bludgeon.

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The Japanese were mindful of European demoralization of China as a result of the Opium War, ending in 1842. After Commodore Perry opened up Japan, the commercial treaty signed by the US and Japan in 1858 prohibited American ships from bringing opium into Japan. The same provision was written into Japan's subsequent commercial treaties with European nations. The 1879 Regulations for the Purchase, Sale and Production of Medicinal Opium ended all free trade of opium in Japan. Henceforth, the sale and distribution of opium for medicinal purposes only, was under government control, so doctors and pharmacists had to get the drug from governmental authorities. By 1896 domestic production of opium had fallen to almost nothing.

Goto Shinpei, who was the chief civil administrator in Taiwan by 1898, created a policy for opium use by the nationals of Taiwan which was supposed to keep nonusers from taking up the habit, while allowing those who already smoked to continue to do so under government regulation. Addicts were required to be registered, but as Jennings explains, by the end of the 1920s, there were as many people using opium who were not registered as ones who were. There was no stigma among the Taiwanese for opium use. A subsequent lucrative monopoly system by the goyo shinshi working with the Medicine Manufacturing Bureau, later the Monopoly Bureau, imported raw opium from international sources, produced smoking paste, and delivered it. For a time, opium sales accounted for more than twenty percent of Taiwan's total annual income. Opium income reached a peak of more than eight million yen in 1918. Jennings created a table of opium revenue and total revenue in Taiwan from the year 1897 until 1941.

In Korea, by the time that opium use was banned in 1914, morphine had replaced it as the drug of choice of addicts, and it was 1929 before the ruling Japanese initiated legislation to curb its use. By the end of World War I, narcotics production under the Japanese monopolies created a large surplus, which was most successfully sold in China, via the controlled territories in Manchuria and northern China. Japan was roundly criticized in the League of Nations for its failure to stop the smuggling of opium throughout China. Jennings explains how the Japanese promoted drug use in China by lucrative government monopoly. He asserts that it "was Japan's plan to carry on a worldwide drug trade from occupied China." Jennings observes that Russell Pasha had declared at a 1937 League of Nations Opium Advisory Committee meeting that Japan was responsible for virtually all of the world's illicit narcotics. Jennings discusses the nefarious careers of opium king Nitan'osa Otozo, who was especially active in Manchukuo and inner Mongolia and Hoshino Naoki who profited from a monopoly in Manchukuo while ostensibly suppressing opium abuse there. He explains that Hoshi Hajime was able to metamorphose himself from drug lord to member of the Upper House of the Diet by 1948. Jennings concludes that the jury is out as to whether Japan actively and consciously promoted opium use throughout its conquests.

The book is well researched, with both published and non-published Japanese language source materials, as well as some sources in English. Most of the unpublished sources are from the Japanese Foreign Ministry Archives, but additional ones such as newspapers are also included. The book includes seven tables such as "Opium Import and Sales in the Kwantung Territory, 1912-1918." Several chapters have been previously published in Modern Asian Studies. This book should be in research libraries for masters and doctoral level students researching Japanese imperialism.

Claire Mamola

Appalachian State University

Copyright Association of Third World Studies, Inc. Spring 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

Opium Empire: Japanese Imperialism and Drug Trafficking in Asia, 1895-1945, The

Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2002 by Mamola, Claire

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