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Abstinent Nation, Addicted Empire:
Opium and Japan in the Meiji Period
Miriam Kingsberg
Abstract. During Japan’s Meiji period (1868-1912), policymakers launched
an ambitious campaign to build a rich and strong state, distinct from a
supine and inferior “Orient.” The exclusion of the opium trade formed
the basis for the depiction of Japan as an abstinent nation, fundamentally
different from, and superior to, the “addicted” polities of Asia. But when
Japan acquired its first colony, Taiwan, in 1895, the drug-free nation found
itself ruling a large population of opium smokers. The ideological baggage of narcotics, as well as concern for Japan’s international image and
financial predicament, resulted in the decision to create a government monopoly over the sale of opium, and to provide medical treatment to addicts
in an effort to “civilize” them. By the end of the Meiji period, Japan’s drug
suppression policies had helped to transform the state from the object of
Euro-American imperialist designs, into a legitimate, even model, nation
and empire
Introduction
In writing the history of nineteenth-century China, scholars have presented
opium as a significant cause of economic decline, social breakdown, and political weakness. The First and Second Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 18561860, respectively) resulted in the semi-colonization of China and inaugurated a century of victimization at the hands of the great powers. The wars
also indirectly impacted the neighboring polity of Japan. Forced to abandon
its longtime stance of isolationism and open to foreign contact in the 1850s,
Japan forestalled the development of a domestic opium economy by strictly
prohibiting the import of the drug. Inspired by the negative example of China,
this proscription laid the foundations for Japan’s rise to modern nationhood
alongside the great powers of the West.1
Although historians have mapped the social and financial consequences of
the exclusion of opium from Japan, the ideological ramifications of the ban
have remained largely unexplored. This essay argues that opium, through its
very absence, provided Japan with a means of conceptualizing its modern
development, first as a nation and subsequently as an empire. Throughout
the second half of the nineteenth century, the threat of colonization by the
Miriam Kingsberg is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
SHAD (2011): 88-106
Kingsberg: Opium and Japan in the Meiji Period
89
West loomed large in the Japanese imagination. To avoid this outcome, policymakers of the Meiji period (1868-1912) launched an ambitious campaign to
remodel Japan as a rich and strong state. They also sought to differentiate the
country from the “Orient.” Within the Euro-American mindset, the Orient was
an object of imperialism, rendered supine and inferior by collective addiction
to opium.2 Meiji ideologues used the exclusion of opium as the basis for the
depiction of Japan as an abstinent nation-state, fundamentally different from,
and superior to, the “addicted” polities of Asia. Using opium to positively
distinguish itself from the colonized Orient, Japan transmitted its determination to resist conquest by the West and achieve recognition as an independent
nation.
Among the first and most notable foreign policy successes of the Meiji
state was victory over China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. This unexpected outcome appeared to signal, to both Japanese and Western observers,
the superiority of Japan over China, the traditional hegemony of East Asia.
The subsequent Treaty of Shimonoseki, which recognized Japan’s victory,
provided the Meiji state with its first colony, the island of Formosa (Taiwan),
home to a large population of opium smokers. Having affirmed its nationhood
through the exclusion of opium, Japan now faced the challenge of administering an empire of “addicts.”3 The ideological baggage of opium, as well as
concern for Japan’s international image and financial predicament, resulted in
the decision to create a government monopoly over the sale of narcotics, and
to provide medical treatment for addiction in the new colony. By the end of
the Meiji period, effective suppression of opium both at home and abroad had
helped to transform Japan from the object of imperialist designs on the part of
great powers, into a legitimate, even model, nation-state and empire.
Building an Abstinent Nation
In 1853, United States President Millard Fillmore dispatched Commodore
Matthew C. Perry to Japan, then in a state of official isolation, to initiate
trade and diplomatic relations. The following year, under the implicit threat
of force, the Japanese government consented to the first of the so-called “unequal treaties,” the Treaty of Kanagawa. This agreement opened five ports and
political intercourse between Japan and the United States, and gave Americans the right of extraterritoriality and other privileges. In a critical followup agreement, the U.S. pledged to refrain from exporting opium to Japan.
Although many American communities had long profited from the sale of the
drug to China, in the decade or so preceding the opening of Japan, society
had increasingly turned against the traffic on moral grounds.4 In the midst of
the Second Industrial Revolution, moreover, Americans were primarily interested in creating markets for manufactured goods, and feared that demand for
opium might reduce Japan’s ability to purchase other products.5
In addition to the economic rationale for voluntary export restrictions, an
anti-narcotics stance also allowed the United States to assert an ethical su-
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periority over Great Britain, the primary source of opium in Asia, and the
nineteenth-century world hegemon. The renunciation of opium trafficking
contributed to the construction of what historian Ian Tyrrell has referred to
as America’s “moral empire”: a vision of global dominance grounded in networks of non-profit reform organizations of citizens abroad.6 Frances Willard
of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union urged the United States to protect “the breezy breath of a new Japan” as it underwent a “magical transformation” in adopting Western civilization.7 Swayed by voices like Willard’s,
most of the European powers, including Holland, France, Great Britain, and
Russia, also signed treaties prohibiting their nationals from exporting opium
to Japan.8
By contrast, China under the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) did not consent
to ban the sale of opium to Japan, citing its own legal inability to restrict the
import of the drug. In the late eighteenth century, China had grown rich exporting tea, silk, and ceramics to Great Britain. Reciprocal interest in Western
goods, however, was low. Seeking to reverse the unfavorable balance of trade,
British entrepreneurs discovered a latent demand for opium in the Chinese
market. Having placed much of South Asia under colonial rule, the British
East India Company supported the cultivation of poppies, selling opium to
China in exchange for goods desired by British consumers. By the 1830s, this
so-called “triangular trade” had brought about a balance of exchange unfavorable to China. The Qing government’s concern over the huge annual outflow
of silver bullion from state coffers resulted in repeated efforts to interdict and
enforce bans of the drug, ultimately enmeshing China and Britain in the Opium War (1839-42).9
In the years after the Opium War, China continued to ban consumption,
but illicit demand for “Western smoke” [yangyan] proved an ongoing drain
on the imperial treasury. Following another loss at the hands of the European
powers in the Second Opium (Arrow) War of 1856-60, the Qing legalized
domestic cultivation of opium. Tacitly acknowledging the futility of prohibition, this policy reversal staunched the outflow of silver to Great Britain,
while allowing consumption to spread from the coast to the interior of the
empire.10 Jonathan Spence, one of the first historians to study opium smoking
as a social phenomenon in late imperial China, has estimated that by 1890,
about ten percent of the population, or fifteen million people, were addicted
to the narcotic.11
From the perspective of the Meiji statesmen who guided Japan through its
transformation into a modern, Western-style nation, China’s relationship with
opium was a cautionary tale.12 Having observed the devastating impact of
the drug on the Qing empire, many policymakers wished to proscribe opium
completely, but it was too important for use as medicine to reject altogether.13
In 1870, the government passed the Raw Opium Control Regulations [Nama
ahen toriatsukai kisoku] and the Laws Concerning the Sale of Smoking Opium [Hanbai ahen en ritsu], requiring doctors and pharmacists to record and
Kingsberg: Opium and Japan in the Meiji Period
91
report quantities of the drug prescribed to patients. Following a nationwide
survey in 1874-75, the government established a comprehensive regulatory
system for domestic poppy cultivation and imports. The production of opium
was forbidden to all private citizens except a few permit-holders. Most poppies were imported from Persia and Turkey. The newly created Sanitation
Bureau processed them into opium paste for distribution through a network of
offices in Japan’s major cities.14
Government regulation of opium was remarkably successful in restraining
the spread of narcotics consumption among Japanese. “The people do not
merely obey the law, but they are proud of it; they would not have it altered if
they could,” reported an American observer at the end of the Meiji period.15
Although the popular rejection of opium was never as complete as ideologues
claimed, the legal restriction of the drug did give rise to a visceral domestic
distaste:
Added to the fear of the effects of opium there is that powerful moral lever which
society holds in its hands of ostracizing those who disregard its conception of
propriety… The Japanese to a man fear opium as we [Westerners] fear the cobra
or the rattlesnake, and they despise its victims. There has been no moment in the
nation’s history when the people have wavered in their uncompromising attitude
towards the drug and its use, so that an instinctive hatred of it possesses them…
An opium user in Japan would be socially as a leper.16
In enforcing anti-narcotics regulations, Japanese police were frustrated by
Westerners, who enjoyed the privilege of extraterritoriality. They could not
be prosecuted in Japanese courts for violating the laws of the land, including
anti-opium legislation. Traffickers were remanded to consular courts, where,
the Japanese public believed, they often escaped justice. In December 1877, in
the most famous instance of opium smuggling by a Western national, customs
caught British merchant John Hartley attempting to secret fifteen catties of
opium (about 20 pounds) into Japan. Turned over to the British consulate and
placed on trial, Hartley defended himself by claiming that the opium was intended for use as medicine (exempted from import restrictions under the Raw
Opium Control Regulations of 1870). While awaiting the verdict on his case,
Hartley was arrested a second time on evidence of further dealings in opium.
In deference to local public opinion, the British placed him on trial again. The
case ultimately produced no clear judgment or punishment for Hartley.17
Unlike Western traffickers, whom the Japanese generally dismissed as opportunists, Chinese opium offenders appeared to threaten the domestic population with “contamination.” State-builders feared that Japan, like China,
would become unable to function as a nation. In 1878, in response to several
incidents in which Japanese nationals, predominantly prostitutes, died as a
result of using opium allegedly furnished by Chinese, the foreign minister,
Terashima Munemori, proposed stricter suppression measures. The 1880
Criminal Code established penalties for the illicit import, manufacture, possession, use, and sale of opium and smoking implements. Japanese who vio-
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lated these bans were subject to fining and imprisonment. Chinese, singled
out as the most likely offenders, could be deported. Terashima also authorized
Japanese police to enter the homes of resident Chinese without warrants and
make arrests. This measure resulted in several violent confrontations between
Chinese migrants and law enforcement personnel. In 1883, in the port city of
Nagasaki, police killed one Chinese and wounded five others when a mob attempted to forcibly prevent an arrest. The Qing consulate in Japan protested
the incident, but the policy remained unchanged.18
During the remainder of the 1880s and early 1890s, random searches of
Chinese neighborhoods, segregated from Japanese residents by law, netted
a steady stream of petty violators. In 1887, Chen Langsi was apprehended in
the act of smoking in his rental lodging in Nagasaki. Police arrested Chen,
confiscated his pipe, and turned him over to the Chinese consulate for deportation.19 Liang Guangfang, a Chinese migrant in the port of Yokohama, was
discovered in his home processing opium paste.20 An anonymous tip led patrolmen to Ding Abing, a Chinese crewman on a Japanese ship who attempted
to transport four “lumps” [kai] of opium ashore.21 Several other foiled efforts
at smuggling involved Chinese on British or American ships passing through
Japanese ports on their way from Hong Kong to the West. Many of the accused were conscripted laborers bound for indentured servitude in Europe and
America.22 Rather than sympathizing with the plight of the Chinese, Japanese
doctors and policymakers presented them as a threat to the opium-free domestic population. “The Chinese who come to our country to live must be
controlled according to our hygiene regulations, and their licentious behavior
must be prohibited,” concluded one newspaper.23
Given the intimate relationship between narcotics and the Japanese national
image, the police and courts spared no effort in bringing opium offenders to
justice. Yet in the last two decades of the Meiji period (1890-1911), only 338
individuals were arrested for violations of the ban on handling and consuming
opium. Even if Chinese nationals committed all of these offenses (a fact that is
not clear from the data), the scale of narcotics crime was extremely limited.24
By the end of the Meiji period, the threat of opium to the Japanese nation lingered only in the collective imagination.
Ruling an Empire of “Addicts”
In 1894, war broke out between China and Japan. The unanticipated victory of
the latter intensified the Japanese conviction that addiction had compromised
China’s ability to function as a nation. The Treaty of Shimonoseki, which
restored peace between the two states in 1895, furnished Japan with its first
overseas colony, Taiwan, a Qing outpost and the home of a large population of
opium smokers.25 Negotiating the terms of China’s surrender, Li Hongzhang
warned his Japanese counterpart, Itō Hirobumi, “Formosa will, I think, present
immense difficulties in the matter of administration, inasmuch as the people
there are deeply addicted to the vicious habit of opium-smoking; and should
Kingsberg: Opium and Japan in the Meiji Period
93
the island come under Japan’s rule, it will cause no small trouble to her.”26 The
Japanese Diet subsequently decided to apply the Meiji Constitution, promulgated six years earlier in 1889, to Taiwan. As a result, the Taiwanese became
Japanese subjects by law.27 The “Japanese” were no longer opium-free.
Both local and global circumstances of the 1890s, as well as Japan’s own
ideological construction of narcotics, conditioned the policy alternatives available to the new colonial government as it deliberated its response to opium
smoking in Taiwan. In becoming an imperialist power, Japan had joined an
exclusive club of Western states. It now sought recognition as a progressive
country capable of administering its empire in a suitably “civilized” manner,
replacing “backward” native customs with modern hygiene, industry, and development. As one policymaker declared, the prohibition of opium was a matter of “national honor [kokka no meiyo] before the entire world.”28 At the local
level, however, the quasi-military Office of the Governor-General [Sōtokufu]
struggled to come to terms with an unfamiliar environment and quell indigenous resistance. The transfer of sovereignty over Taiwan from Qing China to
Japan ignited sustained and violent opposition throughout the island, resulting
in a bloody “pacification” campaign by the Japanese army. Under these hostile conditions, the initial months of colonial rule proved both embarrassing
and costly. With proposals to abandon Taiwan under serious consideration
in the Japanese Diet, the Governor-General, Kodama Gentarō, turned to Dr.
Gotō Shinpei (1857-1929) for help. Though young, Gotō had already built a
national reputation based on his rapid progress through the medical field and
his role in creating a state health service. He and Kodama, who had worked
together during the Sino-Japanese War to design quarantine measures for military veterans, now came together in a collaboration termed the Kodama-Gotō
conbi [combination] to devise the framework of colonial control.
During the decade he served in Taiwan, Gotō laid the institutional and ideological foundations of the Japanese empire. Influenced by the German ideology of imperialism, to which he had been exposed during a period of study
abroad in Berlin and Munich, Gotō set forth a doctrine of “biological colonialism” [seibutsugaku no gensoku]. Biological colonialism called for Japan, as
the ruling power, to acquire an intimate understanding of Taiwanese customs
and traditions as the basis for an organic, scientific, and unopposed campaign
to modernize the local landscape. In Social Darwinist terms, biological colonialism would improve the “fitness” of the Japanese regime by helping it
adapt to its environment. The goal was not to assimilate the Taiwanese, but
to transform them from “barbarians” into civilized and enlightened subjects.
Gotō’s philosophy was a humanitarian [jindōteki] rationalization of imperialism that cultivated legitimacy for Japanese rule through a display of concern
for the welfare of indigenes, including opium smokers.29
At the request of Itō Hirobumi, Gotō undertook a thorough survey of the
land and customs of Taiwan, including narcotics consumption. The investigation counted approximately 170,000 opium smokers, representing over
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six percent of the population.30 Quantification fed calls for action to contain
opium, but colonial policymakers were divided over the best way to proceed.
Although they wished to encourage Japanese immigration to Taiwan, the better to subdue and extract resources from the island, they also feared that military and civilian colonists might be led astray by the example of the opiumsmoking indigene – just as their counterparts in the metropole had feared the
transmission of the habit from Chinese migrants. Immediately upon receiving
authority from Tokyo, the Sōtokufu declared that any Taiwanese caught supplying opium to Japanese troops would be punished with death.31
Gotō Shinpei’s recommendations for narcotics regulation in the colony, set
forth in his November 1895 Taiwan ahen seido ni kansuru iken sho [Memorandum on the Formosan Opium Policy] acknowledged the fear of contamination: “As the Japanese go to the island in large numbers and come in close
contact with the natives, and as some of them may contract the evil habit, it is
easy to see that there is a serious danger of it spreading into Japan… Therefore
the adoption of suppression measures in Formosa is very urgent.”32 The most
obvious way to prevent the spread of smoking to Japanese troops and civilians
was the immediate and absolute prohibition of local opium consumption [genkin shugi]. Gotō, however, favored a gradual policy of suppression [zenkin
shugi]. In a follow-up memorandum, he outlined a plan for the government to
establish a monopoly over the supply of opium in the colony. This institution
would dispense limited quantities of the drug to licensed individual smokers,
reducing the amount over time and enabling users to give up the habit with a
minimum of suffering from withdrawal. The monopoly would also provide a
temporary source of revenue to the Office of the Governor-General, allowing
Taiwan to become financially self-sufficient from Tokyo. In the mid-1890s,
the administration of the colony consumed as much as seven percent of the
metropolitan budget.33
In addition to the financial advantages of gradual suppression, Gotō also
suggested that the institution of the opium monopoly might serve as a source
of colonial prestige. By the mid-1890s, all of the colonial administrations of
Southeast Asia, including the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, Portuguese Macao, and British Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaya, had established
control over the opium market. For the great powers, commitment to saving
the imperial subject from the ravages of narcotics was part of the ideological
justification of empire. In fact, in many colonies the opium monopoly served
to perpetuate and expand consumption, due to its utility in raising revenue for
the state. Yet although the institution tended to subvert rather than support its
alleged goal of gradually suppressing opium, the imperial powers nonetheless
deemed it a hallmark of “civilized” and enlightened government.34 In view of
his adherence to biological colonialism, with its emphasis on developing policies to match local conditions rather than universal criteria, Gotō was skeptical of applying European colonial practices to Taiwan wholesale.35 Yet he also
believed that, by implementing the prohibition strategy of the great powers,
Kingsberg: Opium and Japan in the Meiji Period
95
Japan could demonstrate its ability to meet the norms of imperial rule.
The chief civil administrator of Taiwan, Mizuno Jun, supported Gotō’s idea
of an opium monopoly. Though the two men often disagreed on matters of
colonial policy, they came together over the matter of narcotics regulation. In
1896, Mizuno submitted a memorandum to the metropolitan government espousing gradual suppression. From the outset of colonial rule, Mizuno wrote,
Japan had deplored “the tragic reality of opium poisoning” taking place among
the Chinese. Narcotics were “the ruin of four hundred million people… and
the country [ahen bōkoku].”36 Japan now had the opportunity to save the Taiwanese from this fate. In extirpating the habit of opium smoking, however,
Mizuno suggested proceeding with caution: “In getting rid of a hundred-year
habit, we must work gradually so as not to provoke bad feelings.”37 With resistance to Japanese rule ongoing, he hesitated to furnish an additional pretext
for protest by intervening immediately and intimately in local customs. In his
understanding,
Many of the Chinese officers and men who had been garrisoned in the island and
were dissatisfied with its cession to Japan joined the rebels; and these induced
peaceful citizens to join them by declaring that if Formosa came under Japanese
rule, opium-smoking would be strictly forbidden and thus the inhabitants would
be permanently deprived of the pleasure of opium-smoking, and therefore should
now oppose the Japanese Government. The opium question, then, was not merely
a question relating to opium only, but one with great influence on the subjugation
of the rebels; and this only added to the difficulty of its solution.38
In response to critics who feared interim transmission of opium smoking to
Japanese settlers in Taiwan, Mizuno countered that any stricter measure to ban
the drug would lead to “the exact opposite result.”39
Mizuno also argued that the Japanese were an “active” race, drawn to the
stimulant of alcohol, and biologically insulated against cravings for the soporific of opium. In making this contention, he referenced the belief, common
throughout the nineteenth-century world, that alcohol and opium represented
the essence of the “West” and the “Orient,” respectively. This framework
rested on the assumption that all societies demanded some type of consciousness-altering agent, which could be arranged in a hierarchy that reflected the
relative status of the consuming nations. Leading figures of the medical world
lent scientific credibility to this hypothesis. Dr. Sakai Yoshio of the Tokyo
Imperial University Medical College maintained that the consumption of sake
marked the Japanese as an “active” race, in contrast to the Chinese, a “lethargic” race that smoked opium.40 Sakai did not refer to the chemical properties
of alcohol and narcotics in determining their comparative value. Rather, as
Chinese literature specialist Keith McMahon has observed, “the vilification
and suppression of opium as opposed to alcohol… have everything to do with
drawing lines between fit and unfit states of being.”41 Although some Japanese
in Taiwan had been caught trafficking in opium, Mizuno assured his readers
that these offenders were not using the drug themselves. “Alcohol, rather than
opium, is the enemy we Japanese must combat,” he stated.42 Gotō even sug-
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gested eliminating taxes on sake to encourage the Taiwanese to drink instead
of smoke opium.43
Against the consensus of Mizuno and Gotō, some bureaucrats advocated
the adoption of immediate suppression measures. Katō Hisayuki of the Home
Ministry Sanitation Bureau feared that allowing opium smoking to continue,
even in the short term, would drain both individual and national strength. He
also objected to the opium monopoly for prioritizing the financial benefit of
Japan over the mission to civilize the Taiwanese. He called upon his country
to “lay bare before the world our government’s principle of eschewing profit
[hi shū’nyū shugi]” and to “follow the path of philanthropy and righteousness [hakuai kōdō no shugi].”44 In Katō’s view, swift suppression of opium
would “make Japan’s honor shine even more brightly… beneath the gaze of
the international community.”45 He believed that the abstinent nation-state of
Japan simply could not accommodate an addicted colony: “Japan and opium
are fundamentally incompatible. Where the Japanese go, they must get rid of
opium.”46
The debate over narcotics policy spilled into the public forum. Naitō Konan,
the editor of Taiwan’s new Japanese-language newspaper, the Taiwan nippō
[Taiwan daily news], made opium a headline issue. Naitō was already a Sinologist of some renown when he arrived in Taiwan in the spring of 1897. Under
his direction, the Taiwan nippō regularly published tallies of opium smokers,
traffickers, and dens in the colony. The paper also reported on the state of
anti-opium knowledge abroad. When Great Britain dispatched a survey team
to its colonies to investigate the extent of consumption, Naitō applauded English “royalty, nobility, scholars, and trained specialists” for taking an interest
in the problem.47 Naitō believed that the eradication of “shocking” practices
like opium smoking would create a more favorable environment for Japanese
settlement in Taiwan. He, like Gotō, upheld Japan’s humanitarian responsibility to improve the racial fitness of the Taiwanese. In a series of front-page
editorials on “the great purpose of our administration in Taiwan [Taiwan seiji
no dai mokuteki],” Naitō expressed his conviction that “in addition to ruling
[the colony] for the profit of Japanese settlers, we must also take the welfare
of the natives into account in our plans; and in order to encourage progress according to the principles of a civilized country, we must seek to change, little
by little, the ways of the indigenes.” In the editor’s view, gradual rather than
abrupt change was more humane, practical, and likely to succeed.48
At the end of January 1897, the Yomiuri Shinbun [Daily Yomiuri], a leading
newspaper in the Japanese home islands, published a series of editorials by
Ishiguro Tadanori, chief medical inspector for the imperial army in Taiwan,
summarizing the argument in favor of gradual prohibition. Ishiguro acknowledged that a strict and immediate ban on opium was ideal for preventing the
contamination of Japan and the Japanese by opium. Nonetheless, as a doctor,
he declared it “un-benevolent [fujin]” to sacrifice the health of the opiumsmoking minority for the sake of protecting the abstinent majority.49 If the
Kingsberg: Opium and Japan in the Meiji Period
97
Japanese government cracked down on consumption too abruptly, Ishiguro
pointed out, many smokers were likely to die from the agony of withdrawal.50
Instead of exacerbating the local security situation with an unpopular policy,
he proposed cultivating the devotion [shinpuku] of the Taiwanese to the new
government by stretching prohibition over a longer time frame. As an interim
measure, Ishiguro suggested restricting the immigration of opium-smoking
mainland Chinese into Taiwan, where they might encourage backsliding
among the local population.51 In advocating gradual prohibition, Ishiguro also
appealed to Japan’s desire to emulate the great powers of the West, which, as
Gotō had noted, all maintained opium monopolies in their Southeast Asian
colonies.52
Alongside Ishiguro’s editorial, the Yomiuri Shinbun announced the promulgation of the Taiwan Opium Law [Taiwan ahen rei], which came into effect
in April 1897. The legislation enumerated a series of regulations regarding the
sourcing and marketing of opium through the institution of a state monopoly.
By 1901, the Office of the Governor-General had established a formal Opium
Monopoly Bureau [Ahen senbai-kyoku] to fully realize control over supply
on the island. To sell opium on its behalf, the regime issued licenses to approximately a thousand Taiwanese elites.53 Many of these newly authorized
petty distributors already served the colonial government as representatives of
the indigenous community police system [Chinese, baojia; Japanese, hokō].
As intermediaries between the Sōtokufu and the Taiwanese population, they
helped to stabilize Japanese control.54
To regulate consumption, the Opium Monopoly Bureau issued permits to
all Taiwanese smokers, redeemable at intervals for a fixed, theoretically falling, quantity of narcotics. By under-pricing licit opium relative to smuggled
opium, the authorities furnished smokers with an economic incentive to join
the registry. Applicants required the approval of a doctor, but beyond the establishment of a minimum age of twenty, the physical conditions that qualified
a patient for a daily ration of opium were not elaborated. To prevent more
people from adopting the habit of smoking, the government stipulated a fixed
time period during which permits would be issued. The Office of the Governor-General claimed that the Taiwanese were delighted by the law: “When the
declaration respecting the grant of licences for smoking for medical reasons
was issued and followed by the Opium Ordinance, it was received with great
joy not only by the old confirmed smokers themselves, but also by the general
public.”55 Whether this “great joy” was genuine or only imagined on the part
of the colonizers, the regime found compliance satisfactory. Arrests for violations of the Opium Law dwindled from 1,046 in 1901, to 56 in 1905.56
In the pages of the Taiwan nippō, Naitō depicted the Opium Law as a humanitarian Japanese rescue of the “backward” Taiwanese. Upon the implementation of the legislation, he wrote, “Originally opium smoking harmed
the people of the Qing empire, and narcotics use sapped the nation’s strength.
Naturally, in our country opium use is strictly prohibited. Now the Opium
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Law will, over a period of many years, also save the lives of the Taiwanese
from the peril of drugs.”57 Although Naitō had once believed that “the predilection of the natives for opium smoking is stronger than the attraction of
the Japanese for alcohol,” in early 1898 he debuted a more hopeful stance,
observing that drinking establishments had grown more numerous over the
past year, as the Taiwanese, “in the manner of Japanese,” gravitated towards
the pleasures of sake.58 Meanwhile, journalist Takekoshi Yosaburō reported
that Japanese migrants were successfully resisting the negative example of
their indigenous neighbors: “I heard… that among the 50,000 Japanese who
live in Formosa, only one in the Shinko District, two in the Taito District, and
one in the Taihoku District are habitual smokers. There is also one in the Toroku District who is suspected of being an opium smoker. When I heard this I
could not help feeling proud of my race.”59 Where abstinence from narcotics
had once distinguished the Japanese from a larger population of “Orientals,”
it now came to function as a marker of the superiority of the ruling elite over
the colonial subject.
The alleged danger of the transmission of opium smoking from the Taiwanese to the Japanese having been contained, the colonial government adopted
measures to forestall the re-introduction of the drug by migrant Chinese. Prior
to Japan’s acquisition of Taiwan in 1895, large numbers of mainland Chinese,
particularly from the coastal province of Fujian, came annually to the island
as settlers. The Qing government encouraged this demographic redistribution, which relieved rural overpopulation and strengthened Chinese control
over Taiwan. Although the Sōtokufu mistrusted mainland migrants, the labor
demands of new colonial enterprises, including plantations, mines, and factories, soon came to outstrip local supply. The Japanese colonial authorities
accordingly developed procedures for admitting a limited number of laborers
at specified ports, while excluding “undesirable” elements, including opium
smokers and vagrants. Prior to departing from the mainland, Chinese were
to be quarantined overnight by labor procurement companies. These enterprises were responsible for issuing landing certificates specifying the name,
age, birthplace, occupation, sea vessel, and motives of the migrant. They also
screened out individuals suspected of addiction, deporting overlooked cases at
their own cost.60 Despite this surveillance, Chinese opium users continued to
trouble the colonial authorities of Taiwan. In 1905, the Sōtokufu commenced
issuing smoking permits to a limited number of Qing migrants. From 1905 to
1938, they comprised, on average, less than two percent of the total number
of registered users.61
The permit system rested on an implicit belief, common throughout the
turn-of-century world, that constricting the supply of substances would naturally curb demand. Although doctors such as Gotō and Ishiguro expressed
concern for the health of smokers, the Taiwan Opium Law made no explicit
provision for medical assistance in the detoxification process. Physicians,
however, soon began to consider dependence on narcotics from the perspec-
Kingsberg: Opium and Japan in the Meiji Period
99
tive of modern scientific (i.e., Western) medicine. During the Meiji period,
the institutionalization of Western-style laboratories and hospitals, the twin
pillars of scientific medicine, came to symbolize the right to rule of the government, the fitness of the population, and the “civilization and enlightenment” of the modern nation-state.62 The transmission of scientific medicine
to the empire likewise reflected a quest for international status, power, and
legitimacy.63 Although Japanese doctors had almost no experience in treating
addiction at home, those who migrated to Taiwan at the outset of colonial
rule soon came to view dependence on narcotics as a medical problem to be
studied and cured. The regime supported this project in the hope that helping
smokers to detoxify would win the gratitude and loyalty of the Taiwanese. In
late 1897, migrant physicians from the metropole formed the Taipei Medical Society [Taihoku igaku shakai] and announced their intention of studying
the pathology of addicts. Already, the association claimed, over one hundred
opium smokers per day were showing up at the Japanese government clinic,
the Taipei Hospital [Taihoku Iin].64 In 1900, public physicians [kōi] treated 48
patients for dependence on opium and oral overdose (a common means of suicide).65 These doctors, mostly Japanese, were dispersed throughout the island
to discharge hygiene measures at the district level. Though not employed by
the government, they received state subsidies for their work.66
Public doctors generally sought to alleviate withdrawal symptoms in patients by administering an opiate-based analgesic. As a result, in many cases
the “cure” simply shifted addiction from opium to another substance, such
as morphine. In 1900, public doctors claimed to have cured only 9 patients.67
To increase treatment success and improve health conditions in Taiwan more
generally, the colonial government commissioned the Taiwan Local and Contagious Disease Investigation Committee [Taiwan chihōbyō oyobi densenbyō
chōsa iinkai]. The committee submitted its two-part report, “On the treatment
of opium addicts,” in 1900. Beginning with the premise that “the fact that addicts should be saved is obvious,” the team proposed mandatory, segregated
treatment for opium smokers. The report also recommended the allocation of
government funding to support research on addiction in public hospitals.68
Doctors were encouraged to circulate their findings widely for the benefit of
the general medical community. The Taiwan nippō published several demographic studies of opium smokers and their symptoms.69 The Taiwan Igakkai
Zasshi [Journal of the Taiwan Medical Society], a Japanese-language scientific periodical published monthly in Taipei beginning in 1902, also served
as a forum for the dissemination of information about addiction. In 1903, Dr.
Kimura Kingo’s “First report on the physique of addicts” assessed the physical characteristics of one hundred Taiwanese opium smokers. From questioning this sample, Kimura surmised that a majority of narcotics users had taken
up the habit between the ages of twenty and thirty. The modal age of consumers was between thirty and forty years old. Ninety percent had started smoking
for medical reasons. At the turn of the century, opium, which suppressed diar-
100
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 25 (2011)
rhea and inhibited coughing, was one of few known treatments for common
scourges such as cholera and tuberculosis. It was also widely used to relieve
pain from injury and chronic disease. To Kimura, however, the use of opium
as medicine reflected the ignorance typical of unskilled laborers, the dominant
occupational group in the sample. Comparing the smokers to a control population of abstinent Japanese, Kimura found the Taiwanese less vigorous in terms
of both height and weight. Many of the doctor’s successors, as well as writers
outside the medical discipline, similarly compared unhealthy colonial subject
bodies with robust Japanese to validate claims of Japanese racial superiority
and fitness for imperial rule.70
Although other topics, such as vaccination, soon supplanted addiction as
the focus of Kimura’s research, he left behind a cohort of specialists to take his
place in the field. These included two Japanese doctors, Inagaki Chōjirō and
Sakagami Kōzō; and three Taiwanese doctors: Wang Zhenqian, Lin Qingyue,
and Meng Tiancheng.71 In contrast to the empires of the West, which tended
to consider scientific medical knowledge the prerogative of the colonizer, Japan sought to include local physicians in the quest to build public health in
Taiwan. Lin and Meng, who collaborated on several papers, were educated
at the medical school established by the imperial government. Lin was a first
author or collaborator on three separate studies of registered opium users and
their treatment in Taipei in 1908.72 Meng was an early mentor of Tsungming
Tu [Japanese, Do Sōmei], a Japanese-educated Taiwanese who became one of
the world’s leading researchers and clinicians on opium addiction in the 1930s
and 1940s.73
At the turn of the century, the quest to understand dependence on opium
from a scientific medical perspective derived urgency from a competing cure
offered by the Feiluan Jingbihui [Society of the flying phoenix and the divine
will]. This quasi-religious association represented one of the first organized
efforts in Taiwan to treat opium addiction. The Feiluan Jingbihui originated
in southeast China and reached Taiwan in 1897. Members seeking relief from
opium cravings placed a pipe in front of an enshrined deity and requested
divine assistance. After this ceremony, they received a quantity of holy water, containing incense, ashes, and opium. Supplicants drank a portion of the
water immediately, and retained the rest for home use. They were told their
cravings would disappear when the water had been completely consumed.
By 1901, the Feiluan Jingbihui had established branches throughout Taiwan,
attracting adherents among elites as well as common people. A survey by the
Japanese administration in September of that year found that the organization had helped 34,370 individuals to quit smoking, out of a total opium user
population of 169,064. Although the Feiluan Jingbihui mission to cure addiction was purportedly consonant with the aims of the Sōtokufu, in reality, the
colonial government viewed the movement as a threat to the profitability of its
new monopoly. Moreover, physicians, including Taiwanese doctors trained in
scientific medicine, objected to the society as a vestige of traditionalism and
Kingsberg: Opium and Japan in the Meiji Period
101
backwardness that directly contravened their ambition to modernize public
health in Taiwan. Casting the organization as a religious front for anti-Japanese activities, the government moved to suppress it.74
Ironically, following the elimination of the Feiluan Jingbihui, colonial doctors largely lost interest in the problem of opium addiction. Having contained
the challenge to scientific medicine, most physicians turned their attention to
the ongoing threat of tropical diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever. The
number of addiction cases treated annually by public doctors dropped from
675 to 28.75 For nearly two decades, the Taiwan Igakkai Zasshi did not publish
any research on opium.76 Not until the late 1920s, under very different social
and political conditions, did physicians and the state once again collaborate in
the research and treatment of addiction.77
Epilogue: A Model for the World
Following the adoption of a gradual suppression policy in Taiwan in 1897,
the Japanese Diet established a state monopoly over opium in the metropole.
The institutionalization of state control of the narcotics market in Japan, following its justification in the empire, was one of the first but by no means
only instances in which innovation in the colonies inspired change at home.78
Under the new regulations, opium purchased abroad by government agents
was to be processed in a central facility and funneled to local authorities,
from which licensed pharmacists might acquire it for sale to consumers. Domestically grown poppies were subject to inspection by the Tokyo Hygiene
Lab; if their morphine content was deemed adequate, the government would
purchase them from cultivators for a fixed price. Crops that did not meet government standards would be destroyed.79 Violations were infrequent: between
the establishment of the government monopoly in 1897, and 1911, the last full
calendar year of the Meiji period, the judicial system prosecuted a mere 280
infractions. All but 40 defendants were sentenced to imprisonment or hard
labor.80 Given the perception that Japan’s opium-free status was essential to
its development as a modern nation and empire, the judicial system remained
disinclined to show leniency to convicted offenders.
In Taiwan, by contrast, the opium economy thrived under the state monopoly. Although Gotō had intended the institution to become anachronistic
as smokers died out or abandoned their habit, desire for the profits of narcotics
sales blocked any sincere attempt on the part of the Office of the GovernorGeneral to limit consumption. By raising the price of opium, the Monopoly
Bureau increased its receipts each year for two decades following the passage
of the Opium Law.81 Unable to afford smoking opium, many users turned to
cheaper substances such as cocaine, morphine, and heroin. By 1929, annual
per capita consumption of refined substances reached 0.1 grams.82 Nonetheless, the government touted falling numbers of registered smokers as evidence
that its enlightened rule had extirpated the opium market. From a peak of
169,064 licensed users, comprising 6.3 percent of the population of Taiwan,
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Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 25 (2011)
the number of registered smokers declined to 98,987 in 1910, 48,012 in 1920,
and 23,237 in 1930 (0.5 percent of the population).83 Natural attrition accounted for much of this decline, claiming an average of approximately 7,500 lives
annually between 1899 and 1911.84
In the early twentieth century, China and the West accepted Japan’s apparently swift success in suppressing the opium market at face value. In 1906, the
Qing empire adopted a six-year policy of gradual suppression, declaring its
intention to “Cut [opium] off, root and branch… Know the shame of not being
like Japan.”85 Only a few years after the passage of the Opium Law, Americans also took note of Japan’s achievements in Taiwan. Having acquired possession of the Philippines from Spain in 1898, the United States sought a
prototype for narcotics policy in its new colony. The Philippine Opium Commission, appointed in 1906 to investigate frameworks of control, recommended Taiwan as a model for American policy
What has been done during the past eight years by this quick-witted, enterprising
nation for the benefit of the Formosans… has resulted in a state of peace such as
probably the history of the island has never before known, even temporarily. Not
least in the Japanese campaign of progress has been the attempt to grapple with
the opium problem and solve it so far as it touches Formosan life.86
As early Meiji policymakers had predicted from their observation of Qing
China, the exclusion of opium might well have made the difference between
development as an independent state, and colonization or sovereignty compromised by European or American domination. Within fifty years, the establishment of an effective system of narcotics regulation had helped to transform Japan from the object of imperialist designs on the part of great powers,
into a legitimate, even model, nation-state and empire.
University of Colorado at Boulder
[email protected]
Endnotes
1. In English, the most noteworthy piece of scholarship to address the impact of opium on
nineteenth-century Japan is Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi’s “From Peril to Profit: Opium in Late-Edo
to Meiji Eyes,” in Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952, ed. Timothy Brook
and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000): 55-77.
2. James H. Mills and Patricia Barton, eds., Drugs and Empires: Essays in Modern Imperialism and Intoxication, c. 1500-c. 1930 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
3. I place the word “addict” in quotation marks in recognition of the fact that the term is typically used in reference to a constructed identity and stereotype that may have little relationship
to the “drug user,” the value-neutral consumer of drugs. For a recent treatment of the politics of
the term “addict,” see Toby Seddon, A History of Drugs: Drugs and Freedom in the Liberal Age
(New York: Routledge, 2010).
4. Elizabeth Kelly Gray, “The Trade-Off: Chinese Opium Traders and Antebellum Reform in
the United States, 1815-1860,” in Mills and Barton, Drugs and Empires, 220-42,
5. William B. McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: An International History
(New York: Routledge, 2000), 27.
Kingsberg: Opium and Japan in the Meiji Period
103
6. Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2009), 4.
7. Quoted in Lorine Swainston Goodwin, The Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders, 18791914 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1999), 31-34.
8. Satō Saburō, Kindai Nit-Chū kōshōshi no kenkyū (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 1984):
185-220.
9. For a full-length English-language treatment of the Opium War, see James M. Polachek, The
Inner Opium War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Council on East Asian Studies,
1992); David Anthony Bello, Opium and the Limits of Empire: Drug Prohibition in the Chinese
Interior, 1729-1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005).
10. For a full-length treatment of the Second Opium (Arrow) War, see J. Y. Wong, Deadly
Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998).
11. Jonathan Spence, “Opium Smoking in Ch’ing China,” in Conflict and Control in Late
Imperial China, ed. Frederic Wakeman, Jr. and Carolyn Grant (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1975), 154.
12. Konishi Jirō, “Ahen sensō no waga kuni ni oyoboseru eikyō,” Komazawa shigaku, 1, no.
1 (1953): 11-24.
13. During the early modern period, opium was offered as a palliative by the tradition of Rangaku (“Dutch learning”). See Yamawaki Teijirō, Kinsei Nihon no iyaku bunka (Tokyo: Heibōsha,
1995): 173-98.
14. Control of Opium in Japan: Report of the Japanese Delegates to the International Opium
Commission (Shanghai, 1909): 3-16.
15. “Use of Opium and Traffic Therein: Message from the President of the United States,
Transmitting the Report of the Committee Appointed by the Philippine Commission to Investigate the Use of Opium and the Traffic Therein” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1906), 23.
16. Ibid., 22.
17. Although the Hartley case is often depicted as the height of Western abuse of the privilege
of extraterritoriality, historian Richard T. Chang argues that, in general, Western consular courts
in Japan did not fail to render evenhanded justice. Source: Richard T. Chang, The Justice of the
Western Consular Courts in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984),
79.
18. “Nagasaki no gaikokujin inryūchi ni te Shinajin ga bōkō to hataraku koto,” Yomiuri Shinbun, September 30, 1883, 2.
19. “Ahen han,” Yomiuri Shinbun, June 16, 1887, 3.
20. “Shinajin ahen to mitsuzō,” Yomiuri Shinbun, March 15, 1894, 3.
21. “Ahen mitsuyu’nyū,” Yomiuri Shinbun, September 20, 1897, 2.
22. “Ahen mitsu yu’nyū no roken,” Yomiuri Shinbun, April 27, 1890, 3. For more on British
and American management of Chinese conscript labor and opium, see Curtis Marez, Drug Wars:
The Political Economy of Narcotics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004): 39-69.
23. “Shinajin zakkyo mondai,” in Tō-A Dōbun Shoin ahen chōsa hōkokusho. CD-ROM (Toyohashi: Aichi Daigaku Tō-A Dōbun Shoin Daigaku ki’nen senta-, 2007), No. 19.
24. Nihon teikoku tōkei nenkan, Vols. 11-32 (Tokyo: Tōkei kyōkai, 1892-1913).
25. Some historians have argued that Hokkaidō and the Ryūkyū Islands (Okinawa), which
were legally absorbed into the Japanese metropole and retained after World War II, were Japan’s
first real colonies. For an example of recent scholarship that treats Hokkaidō and Okinawa as
colonies, see Oguma Eiji, “Nihonjin” no kyōkai: Okinawa, Ainu, Taiwan, Chōsen, shokuminchi
shihai kara fukki undō made (Tokyo: Shin’yōsha, 1998).
26. Baron Shimpei Gotō, “The Administration of Formosa (Taiwan),” in Fifty Years of New
Japan Vol. II, ed. Shigenobu Ōkuma and Marcus B. Huish (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company,
1909), 530.
27. Edward I-te Chen, “The Attempt to Integrate the Empire: Legal Perspectives,” in The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945, ed. Ramon Myers and Mark Peattie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984); Asano Toyomi, Teikoku Nihon no shokuminchi hōsei: Hōiki tōgō to tei-
104
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 25 (2011)
koku chitsujo (Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku shuppankai, 2008).
28. Mizuno Jun, Taiwan shobun (Tokyo: Mizuno Jun, 1898), 22.
29. The most complete biography of Gotō remains Tsurumi Yūsuke’s Gotō Shinpei den (Tokyo: Taiheiyō kyōkai shuppan bu, 1943). The first and second volumes of this work are devoted
to Gotō’s administrative career in Taiwan. In English, see Yukiko Hayase, “The Career of Gotō
Shinpei: Japan’s Statesman of Research, 1857-1929,” (Ph.D. Diss., Florida State University,
1974).
30. Liu Jin-tan, Jin-long Liu and Shin-yi Chow, The Demand for Opium in Colonial Taiwan,
1914-1942 (Taipei: Academia Sinica Institute of Economics, 1996), 5.
31. The most complete account of Japan’s engagement with opium in colonial Taiwan is provided in Ryū Meishū, Taiwan tōchi to ahen mondai (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 1983). In
English, see Hsu Hung Bin, “From Smokers to Addicts: A History of Opium and is Uses in Taiwan,” (Ph.D. Diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, 2008).
32. Quoted in Kaku Sagatarō, Opium Policy in Japan (Geneva: Albert Kundig, 1924), 19.
33. Robert Tierney, Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of the Japanese Empire in Comparative
Frame (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 39.
34. Anne L. Foster, “Opium, the United States, and the Civilizing Mission in Colonial Southeast Asia,” Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 24 (2010): 6-19.
35. Mizobe Hideaki, “Gotō Shinpei ron: Tōsōteki sekaizō to ‘risei no dokusai,’” Hōgaku ronsō
100, no. 2 (1976): 62-96.
36. Mizuno Jun, “Shina ahen en hōshi ron,” Yomiuri Shinbun, November 29, 1895, 1.
37. Mizuno, Taiwan shobun,11.
38. Control of Opium in Japan, 37.
39. Mizuno, Taiwan shobun, 10.
40. Shintō kagaku kenkyūsho, Ahen oyobi ruiji ‘arukaroido’ mansei chūdokushō no kōkateki
chiryō to sono hōsaku (Tokyo: Shintō kagaku kenkyūsho, 1936), 29.
41. Keith McMahon, The Fall of the God of Money: Opium Smoking in Nineteenth-Century
China (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 8.
42. Mizuno, Taiwan shobun, 10.
43. Tsurumi, Gotō Shinpei den, 630-2.
44. Katō Hisayuki, Taiwan ni okeru ahen (Taihoku, 1906), 37.
45. Ibid., 1-3.
46. Ibid., 7.
47. “Eikoku ahen chōsa kai to Taiwan ahen gyōsei,” Taiwan nippō, October 22, 1897, 1.
48. “Taiwan seiji no dai mokuteki,” Taiwan nippō, Aug. 7, 1897; “Taiwan seiji no dai mokuteki,” Taiwan nippō, August 11, 1897, 1.
49. “Ishiguro sōkan no ahen tan,” Yomiuri Shinbun, March 10, 1896, 2.
50. Ishiguro Tadanori, “Taiwan ni okeru ahen en ni oite,” Yomiuri Shinbun, January 28, 1897,
4.
51. Ishiguro Tadanori, “Taiwan ni okeru ahen en ni oite,” Yomiuri Shinbun, January 26, 1897,
3.
52. Ishiguro Tadanori, “Taiwan ni okeru ahen en ni oite,” Yomiuri Shinbun, January 24, 1897,
3.
53. Taiwan Sōtokufu tōkei sho Vols. 8-15 (Taihoku: Taiwan Sōtokufu Minsei bu bunsho ka,
1904-1911).
54. Caroline Hui-yu Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control: The Hokō System in Taiwan under Japanese
Rule, 1895-1945,” (Ph.D. Diss., Columbia University, 1990), 125.
55. Control of Opium in Japan, 65.
56. Nihon teikoku tōkei nenkan Vol. 27, 925.
57. “Ahen rei jisshi oite chūi,” Taiwan nippō, August 25, 1897, 2.
58. “Ahen gyōseki no genkyō,” Taiwan nippō, July 6, 1897; “Shinminsei-kyoku chō to ahen
rei,” Taiwan nippō, March 13, 1898, 1. For more on Naitō, see Joshua Fogel, Politics and Sinology: The Case of Naitō Konan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Council on East Asian
Studies, 1984).
59. Takekoshi Yosaburō, Japanese Rule in Formosa, trans. George Braithwaite (Taipei: SMC
Kingsberg: Opium and Japan in the Meiji Period
105
Publishing, 1907), 154.
60. Kaku, Opium Policy in Japan, 36.
61. Taiwan no ahen seido (Taipei: Taiwan Sōtokufu keimu-kyoku, 1939), 3-5.
62. On the implementation of scientific medicine in Japan during the Meiji period, see Nakayama Shigeru, Academic and Scientific Traditions in China, Japan, and the West, trans. Jerry
Dusenbury (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1984); and Susan L. Burns, “Constructing the National Body: Public Health and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” in Nation Work: Asian
Elites and National Identities, ed. Timothy Brooks and Andre Schmid (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2003): 17-49.
63. Several recent, full-length works look at the implementation of scientific medicine in colonial Taiwan. In English, see Ming-cheng M. Lo, Doctors Within Borders: Profession, Ethnicity,
and Modernity in Colonial Taiwan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); and Michael
Shiyung Liu, Prescribing Colonization: The Role of Medical Practices and Policies in JapanRuled Taiwan, 1895-1945 (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 2009). In Japanese, see
Iijima Wataru, Mararia to teikoku: Shokuminchi igaku to Higashi Ajia no kōiki chitsujo (Tokyo:
Tokyo Daigaku shuppankai, 2005).
64. “Ahen insha to Taihoku Iin,” Taiwan nippō, October 14, 1897, 2.
65. Uga Jirō, Taiwan ahen shi (Taihoku: Taiwan Sōtokufu senbai-kyoku, 1926), 405.
66. Hsu, “From Smokers to Addicts,” 245.
67. Uga, Taiwan ahen shi, 406.
68. Ibid., 401-3.
69. See, for example, “Taihoku no ahen kyūshoku sha,” Taiwan nippō, March 10, 1898, 2.
70. Kimura Kingo, “Ahen insha taikaku kensa dai ichi hōkoku,” Taiwan Igakkai Zasshi, 2,
No. 3 (1903): 1-5.
71. I have not found any definitive information on the pronunciation of the characters that
make up the names of Inagaki Chōjirō and Sakagami Kōzō, and have chosen the most likely
readings.
72. Lin Qingyue, “Ahen inja no kenkyū ni oite,” Taiwan Igakkai Zasshi 7, no. 65 (1908): 81123; Lin Qingyue, “Yo ga sa kōan seshi ahen inja chiryōzai no chiryō seiseki soi,” Taiwan Igakkai
Zasshi 7, no. 66 (1908), 217; and Inagaki Chōjirō, Lin Qingyue, and Wang Zhenqian, “Ahen inja
kenkyū hōkoku,” Taiwan Igakkai Zasshi 7, no. 74 (1908), 716-18. For recent scholarship on Lin
Qingyue’s career as an opium addiction specialist, see Huang Wenju, Xing yi in ren ming, nian ge
fen ren ting: Lin Qingyue ji qi zuo pin zhengli yanjiu (Taipei: Wenjin chubanshe, 2009): 20-67.
73. I have retained Tsungming Tu’s own preferred spelling (according to the Wade-Giles romanization system) and order (with surname last) in transcribing his name. In pinyin, his name
would be rendered Du Congming. For a complete account of addiction-related research in colonial Taiwan, from the work of Kimura Kingo through the studies of Tsungming Tu, see Chen
Zhimin, Du Congming yu Taiwan yiliao shi yanjiu (Taipei: Guoli Zhongguo yiyue yanjiusuo,
2005): 83-155.
74. Hui-yu Caroline Tsai, Taiwan in Japan’s Empire-Building An Institutional Approach to
Colonial Engineering (New York Routledge, 2009): 113-39.
75. Uga, Taiwan ahen shi, 406.
76. Taiwan Igakkai Zasshi, Vols. 11-27 (1912-28).
77. Taiwan Sōtokufu keimu bu eisei ka, “Taiwan ahen inja no kōsei,” in Ahen mondai, ed.
Yoshimasa Okada, Yoshio Tatai and Masae Takahashi (Tokyo: Misuzu shobō, 1986): 51-69.
78. The most extensive treatment of the impact of the empire on the metropole is provided in
Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
79. “Ahen hōan,” Yomiuri Shinbun, March 12, 1897, 3.
80. Nihon teikoku tōkei nenkan Vols. 16-30 (1897-1911).
81. Yamada Gōichi, “Taiwan ahen senbai sei no tenkai katei,” Shakai kagaku tōkyū, 44, no. 1
(1998): 1-33.
82. League of Nations Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous
Drugs, Summary of Annual Reports of Governments on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs for the Years 1929 and 1930 (Geneva, 1932), 114.
106
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 25 (2011)
83. Taiwan no ahen seido, 3-5.
84. Taiwan Sōtokufu tōkei sho Vols. 8-15 (1904-11).
85. Quoted in Joshua Rowntree, The Imperial Drug Trade: A Re-Statement of the Opium Question, in the Light of Recent Evidence and New Developments in the East (London: Methuen,
1905), 253.
86. “Use of Opium and Traffic Therein,” 25.