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Welcome to the new books in Japanese Studies, the channel at the new books network. I'm your host, Rens Langenpeth, Rens Japan at Prince State and Kietr University. Today we'll be talking to Judith Vital, Miriam Kingsberg, Vidia, and all the benefit of our edited book, Drugs and the Board of Human Sub-Changer Pan, which cannot be real last year in 2023. Judith, Miriam Olex, our friends and colleagues who have been led along to buy a set of acquaintance and hope to friendship.
I don't much from their work on a range of topics from wartime anthropology, Miriam and of course drugs and better weather later. In addition to the history of Yofa Pan and Castle, something I wrote a book with Olex, also. And the long history of memory and the mongol invasion of Japan and Castle Topography with Judith and which her book just came out with Harvard. But I'm very excited about this.
So I'm thrilled to have them all here today. Thank you for coming everybody. So let me start with the question we ask everybody. What brought you all to this story?
And tell us more about Yofa background as well. And what brought you to Japanese Studies also, except for Miriam. Those are new grounds for all of you now. Hello, Ron.
By training about my background, I started as a medieval historian of Japan. And then for about the past 15 or 20 years, I did views to view on the Middle Ages in early modern and modern Japan through the lens of the mongol invasions. So it was, as you mentioned, about the historical writing of the mongol invasions in Edo, Japan and Mayte Japan and drugs. I'm a very slow publisher and I started being interested in the topic already about over 10 years ago.
I think it was when I was wandering through the library and I saw this title, Ahen Sakhe Machan. So that would be an English opium wine and games by a Japanese author called Inue Kobai. And I didn't look at the books at that time. So next time I went to Japan, I decided to look at it and I was expecting a book about Japanese drug culture.
But actually it was about China. So of course that tells us a lot about the construction of China and Japan in the 1920s. But I was disappointed because it was not about Japanese drug culture. But then about the same time, Asahi Shimbun went online.
So I decided to cross search under the keyword opium and it turns out that there were loads of advertisements for opium in the newspaper in the major period. And that was because there were epidemics of cholera. So it was used as a medicine. So that's from where my research started looking at the medical use of opium and other opiates.
And if anybody was interested in this book by Inue Kobai, Miriam has written about it in her book, More of Nations. So, thank you. And good segue to Miriam. Well, thank you for the shout out.
Yeah, I have been working on drugs for a pretty long time. So I had initially for my doctoral dissertation many years ago been interested in studying the history of Dain Dallian, Japan's longest held territory on the Asian mainland. And obviously a site of settler colonialism and various kinds of imperial experimentation. But when I learned that Dain also had the highest rate of illegal drug consumption of any city ever recorded that changed my focus a lot and really made drugs the primary objective of my dissertation.
So that became my book, which was published 10 years ago in 2014. When I started working on the topic, I really couldn't have imagined that someday there would be enough people interested in it that we could have an edited collection like this. So when you do organized the initial workshop that led to this book in 2019, it was just so exciting for me. And then to be able to proceed to this edited collection was a wonderful journey.
Thank you. And like everybody here, like you also have so much range of work you wrote in some different things afterwards and I meet you in different contexts also in that work. So it's very hard to see you again working on drugs. Yes.
And maybe if it's all just about a workshop, where was it? Oh, yeah. I mean, I can touch on that as well. I mean, I think similar to you did actually kind of start as a medievalist.
I don't know if there's some kind of thing that leads naturally from medievalism to drugs, but I started there. Did all work on especially kind of into the samurai and imperial period and then castles obviously were working right on that. And that's why I think you do some other person working on castles as well. And in terms of kind of a historian becoming interested in drugs, I think it was reading probably John Jennings work on King and Empire, which was.
Also kind of foundational to the workshop and then reading Miriam's book when that came out. But I mean, I guess my own interest goes back a bit further into the 1990s when I first went to Japan and I was in a small town in Japan and randomly just going into a requirement. So we're coming across magic mushrooms and peyote for sale. And I asked my Japanese friends about this and you know, I don't know if I'm doing anything about these things.
They're like, Oh, what is that stuff legal? And it turns out it is legal. And it was just something I kind of noticed at the time. And then I remember the news in 2002 and magic mushrooms were made illegal.
And then later on to my PhD in Vancouver in Canada. I remember there were a lot of debates about legalization of marijuana and a Japanese consulate there warning Japanese citizens in Canada that they shouldn't consume drugs that were illegal in Japan, even if they were legal in other places. And these dynamics got me interested in the history of drugs in Japan. And when you did work together as wonderful workshop in Zurich in 2019, it was a great opportunity to kind of investigate this history of drugs a bit from.
I don't know if you want to know anything about the workshop. Maybe I can say more about the workshop. It was actually because I never got funding for the drug project I had, which was meant to be a book project. And then I finally got a three months day at Harvard University where Jesus Solis who is also asked for in the book, contributed also was commented my paper.
And then I talked to him if he would come and then he originally Miriam was, I think he took courses with Miriam and I asked him. So do you think would Miriam come if I organized a workshop? So actually I feel kind of lucky. I didn't get the funding because it turned into much better project this way because so many people contributed.
Yeah, we should sometimes think we should write a write like we still have students about how well those like political failures lead to a lot of good things. Sometimes you take different turns, you should bring it to good places. So I want to start with the title actually of the book and ask you about what do you mean by the drugs in the title? This is perhaps a contrary to me that we think we all know what drugs mean, but it's very apparent in the first part with the chapters by Jonas Rook.
This I said, Anandreeva and Tim Young. And those jobs are short as much process between different realms of drugs socially medically, otherwise in the early modern period. Can't tell us more about the conceptualization here? He's got the lucky argument also.
Yeah, that's an important question. I mean, when we talk about drugs nowadays, we usually think of illegal substances, but this kind of definition is very recent historically. It probably goes back to the international conventions in the 1910s and 1920s when the prohibition regime evolved and made these access to these drugs more difficult globally. But before that period, drugs were, I mean, what we think are now illegal substances were called poisonous drugs.
So that were drugs which were medically very effective, but also dangerous. So even today, I mean, these substances are in pharmaceutical laws on the one hand and in criminal laws on the other, but it's always the same substances. And probably people think current debates are about legalization, but it's more about how you want to regulate these substances. I mean, you don't want them completely illegal.
You still need them in medical spheres and regulation is something already, early modern states were concerned about regulation, including the early modern Japanese state. So I think it's very important to see these long today to really understand how the whole regulatory system developed in Japan and compared to other countries. I mean, there's several specificities in Japan, which I think can be explained from the longer history of drugs in Japan. So for the volume, I think it's great that we also had early modern historians like Johannes Riegg, and Andra Eva and Ozaki Koji and Tim Young who kind of looked at transition to me.
Yeah, I'm just building on what you said. I think that that sort of long array was was also built into the conception of the book just in terms of how we drew on drug studies for our definition of drugs and drug studies has gotten so robust over the past 20 years or so in terms of its conceptualization of what we think of as a drug sort of becoming more embracing of any kind of psychoact that we're intoxicating substance. And we really wanted to gesture to that sort of conception in the book by showing the historical specificity of what constitutes a quote unquote drug in any particular time. So bringing in the contributions of that historiography was, I think, really important to the three of us as well.
Yes, I can just add a little Easter egg for people listening to the podcast, which is that I mentioned, you want us to make our chapter that that is open access and freely available. So please go to the website and definitely download that. Thank you should mention it before. So yeah, I was also thinking when I was reading Tim Young's book, I think Young Chapter and others and and and and and was Jonathan Roebak, mummies and I remember like that mommy powder.
Like you can see there's a lot of things that Japan has in common with other places but also across so both across space right between earlier New York and more Japan but also the do you do use drugs but also across time and right the idea of what's legal driving was a drug dealer, for example, you've seen with the drugs epidemic now in the US, I mean, what what are drugs, whether the problem I put up with my drugs in US now which are not illegal. It makes it makes one think about what drives me. So I want to start a consumption along the line we just talked about because it's also I'm very important for the argument right at first what are drugs but then like what you call the politics of consumption right you talk about or consumption. Also you talk about the other side, I can just talk a drug trade right commodity chains and networks and also not released a gender ring of drug resources that come to remain parts of the argument.
So, I think that's a good thing to note that the part from the previous work down on drugs. Can you expand a little bit on this? Yeah, so by the politics of consumption we meant that you always have two levels you have to state which does politics by regulating the axis but you can also understand it as the politics of consumption from below the individuals agency by adhering to laws or resisting to laws. And so of course that means that you look at consumer types and the gendering of drug discourse it was just striking that at least three of the contributions are about the standard discourse of millions contribution which looks at how women change their association with drugs.
And then Jesus Sowdis shows how in post-war Japan women were especially a target of state repression and Bill Marukty's contribution is about drugs in the 60s as means to construct women but also men masculinity by glue sniffing as a manly practice. So, I think that is a very good thing to say about commodity chains and networks. I think if you talk about the politics of consumption you must talk about the politics of production it kind of goes together. You can't just look at consumers if you don't look at where the drugs come from and that's maybe asking if we depart from previous work.
I'm not sure readers will maybe find an answer but for me it was interesting. John Jennings wrote a great epilogue about the historiography of drugs when he was writing his book in the 1990s on Japan's Opium Empire. And he there makes very clear that the paradigm was the one set by the Tokyo trials that on the new empire trials it's the only military tribunal that ruled over the legal drug trade. At the time the focus was really on the production side and trade side and it was the challenge was to deconstruct and to all historiography that emerged from these Tokyo trials.
But for me I came in Switzerland it's kind of the opposite. We had a huge drug problem in the 1980s and for some reason politicians and historians sociologists they all looked at the consumers and it was kind of meant to explain that people using drugs were resisting against conservative society but the production side was or the supply side was completely neglected. Nobody asked where these drugs came from. It's changing now.
But from that perspective it was natural for me to look at the consumers and not the producers. For me I mean not that I read so much about drugs before but for me that was new, that the consumption was so focused. Yeah Mary. I think these cultural differences are just so interesting because in the United States in terms of sort of taking on drugs as a quote unquote problem.
The bias has been so strongly towards both regulation and controlling the supply side of it. So the historiography has really followed that to the point where I think our understanding of drug trading and drug trafficking and also of sort of the historiography of narcotics regulation is much more developed than our understanding of consumption so in terms of making a historiographical contribution I think that the fact that we've paid this kind of attention to users really centered users in our collection is something that I'd like to call attention to and I think some of the articles you did article in particular. On being she's article also really foreground those voices of users and try to extract them from the context in which they were sometimes compiled which can be overlaid with the agendas of others and give them room to speak on their own and to me that's that's also an important function of what we're calling the politics of consumption. We travel for all kinds of reasons to think to heal to experience off to transform ourselves to just slow down for a minute and breathe again.
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Yeah and for me, I mean there's so much to talk about in terms of consumption in terms of like state not just regulation but state actually supplying of the trucks which is enough for a lot of people a lot of my students when I when I talk this in the past world was surprised the fact that states were not regulating drugs were actually selling in manufacturing drugs I mean of course it's kind of obvious to people who know these days to read but for students it's a big surprise and of course the number one state drug in a station number one drug in a station you can say if you know this opium right now in photo of these days and no drug more opium dominated history and scholarship in Asia I mean you can of course like the war that or show identity in in you can argue in the east edge of the open war and you have according you have a lot of chapters that are dealing with this right because you're doing to who we already mentioned will enjoy Clarence Smith a chapter that I really interested in involvement in Jewish traders and their ethics in the track rate and also we've mentioned to it but in a way everybody writes here about it only can we explore those different takes and how they add to the already I would say vastly trichurial opium in Asia well when this this first this collection was first composed we we saw it I think representation in types of drugs being included in the book but once the essays had come in and we were trying to organize them cardologically or we found that it made sense to cluster the writings on opium towards the middle of the book because in the Meiji period opium really was the big story for drugs in Japan in some ways this isn't surprising at the time opium was the most effective known analgesic form of pain relief is really only in the 1920s that we start to see morphine and heroin becoming widely available and widely used supplanting opium because they're more intense and easier to use in some ways so I think one thing that I really want to pull out about opium is the fact that we've contextualized it yes but also highlighted it's it's silly and different realms of social and economic life so the chapters I think do a really good job showing its its penetration into different realms was actually called these chapters is on domestic cultivation showing how Japan attempted some import substitution the primary sources he uses are really unclear and conflicting on when and where Japan started its process of cultivating its own opium and I think he goes to some trouble to make a ruling on this debate then only choose chapter on Taiwan sort of how how opium was implicated in this culture of what was in the process of becoming Japan and just what I loved about that chapter was the inclusion of so many human stories like like the widow who was saved from having to be married by a organisation from an opium smoker who is then repaid in opium sort of showing that circularity and pervasiveness of the opium economy and also hinting at its function as an article of money kind of drawing an implicit parallel with some of the narco states of today and then William Clarence Smith's article on the British but we should use the term British loosely because not all were equal representatives of Britishness the British opium traders who were active in supplying opium to parts of the Japanese Empire he comes through all of these diplomatic archives to suggest the precariousness of their stance on on the coloniality and its shifting position in both the Japanese and British empires so just all of these different ways in which opium found its way into the political and social fabric of late Meiji early Tisho Japan I think it goes back to what you were saying about seeing opium in a paper is it's always when you go back to this local record it's surprised how much you know our more ideas about what opium is and why it was and it is being a social problem which of course it became slowly right we don't talk about it maybe a little bit later I mean it was an important one normal drug it was a different from other drugs in many ways so I think for me seeing this in all this work was very important but on the other hand also seeing the human stories I think it's a really good contribution you see when you focus on consumption like a lot of people here do you see you look beyond a drug user right you can see beyond two people's lives and you can see a lot of it in the stories that people bring yes only okay so all right so maybe we can carry on so yeah so so the middle part of the book talking about Meiji but then a whole other part is where we have a whole bunch of articles about the wartime right because in wartime this is where drug supplies network and what it works really expand with the Japanese Empire and you had Chris Billman work for a student near young all focus on drug use during the war and beyond it so I want to ask a very big question that maybe we can answer maybe not in what way did the age of physical or effect drug drug trade and one hand consumption of the other and what was the long term impact is the area you want to post work and how does it connect before and after so the war is a bit difficult because sources are so difficult to access they disappear there's a lot of um those are these have these meetings perfect your meetings before the war where they discuss drug problems and then during the war the resources disappear they might have been destroyed so um it's not that easy to say but it definitely it continues with or our chapters continue with opium so it's still opium is at the main focus and probably the pre-war and wartime period is so interesting because as Miriam mentioned it opium disappears and there's harder drugs more feed or fewer drugs more efficient drugs easier to use because the dosage is precise so probably that makes East Asia so interesting because you have you have opium smoking which is a part of the culture but you also have this modern drug culture which is very transnational and where people in East Asia also participate in it and so the chapters which are about this pre-war time and post-war period they're they showed us from different angles, Chris Beanmann I was also very excited that he participated he's a well-known expert on the Japanese right wing parties and he accepted to kind of really make an article about the involvement of the right wing in the drug trade it was he really did research for our volume and in certain ways it ties into a book which was published a bit over 20 years ago called opium regimes where you see that all these regimes officially they're against drugs but then they all trade in the drug because they just are dependent on the money so Chris shows that there were also right wing people who were drug traffickers from Anturia to China to support the army but who also made a lot of money with the drug trade and that look is that it probably helped to accumulate finances also for the post-war political parties my chapter is really because of the sources it's really about the 20s and 30s when for the first time the Japanese began to be concerned about the medical use of drugs because I'm sorry these but also media realized that people were dependent because they were regular drug users and in a certain way it must be read together with Jesus Solic chapter because he then takes the story to the media post-war period the American occupation and there's continuities the trade would set up like the drugs produced before the war spill into the post-war illegal market from the army directly into the civil life and then he also shows how trade routes change because Japan is connected to the US then and there's also continuities in the stigmatization of certain drug users foreign communities so it's a Koreans before the war and it's and they remain associated with drugs after the war yeah and probably Miriam can say more about her chapter yeah sure um I guess my goal in the chapter was again to sort of delineate the lingering resonances of the war time period in the post-war period by showing how the representation of the quote unquote addict somebody's coordinated to to the hold of drugs obviously a sort of a literary creation how that figure of the addicts changed from the war time period to the post-war period looking at sort of again we've brought up the idea of foreignness and gender but looking at how addiction was seen as this very foreign concept in Japan very gendered in terms of almost transforming the male into a more dependent female obviously drawing on stereotypes about patriarchy and gender relations in that era but looking at looking at how addicts quote unquote were depicted as being these weak feminized dependent foreign creatures mostly Chinese in the in the war time era and then after Japan was defeated in 1945 we do see a sort of a shift in the representation of the addict to depict the self as a sort of a vanquished nation might be these Japanese who had resisted characterization as quote unquote addicts before 1945 who from now it was suddenly a very useful and apt metaphor to sort of characterize their political social and economic status and sort of the demise of that characterization as well in the in the 50s yeah I have to say that the whole tree of a chapter is actually in conversation with each other and I guess you read each other's chapters and it's really a pleasure as someone who you know being through the process of editing books and working with people it was kind of a pleasure to kind of look at a conversation you have with each other especially during the medium chapters are talking to each other and then all in a different way also talk about the same thing about the idea of drugs is as kind of like a mark of foreigners a mark of otherness a mark of you know social traits and you can see the way it shifts from the post to a pre-war it's funny it was driving here it's very early here in Japan and very late in Switzerland I have to say that all of you are in different time zones which is was a feat to even get you to get when I'm very happy to get you they were playing the very weirdly I've got to fight him in Japan because I was some song in awesome design songs in the radio which is very odd and very fitting also because I knew I'm gonna talk to you about about drugs and in a post-war so I want to move I want to say with war though right because one thing that when I was teaching of course on war or sleeping of course the war I was looking for work on on drugs and drugs and coming to the drugs and I talked a couple of years ago I kept thinking those very sensational accounts by journalists named Norman Uda but blitz drugs in a third while which can and it's good focus on use of a purr-viting by German soldiers which basically meant right and it made really exciting claims about it's important so I don't reason why France failed it's because German soldiers were completely high on one on meth and a good driver tanks everywhere without stopping but so it was better that it did start a debate on the world of steam-lanes in German context and met in Vepin of course as you know I'm sure it was invented by Japanese scientists Olatakita and of course Mira and your work on the harpong in the past but I did not see it here upon I mean you said that there is movement here upon from opulence and other drugs but here upon was for me was not mentioned as much was this intentional in what way is a harpong and opulent different or maybe it just me not seeing it as much looking for my comic-couset there's a really practical reason for this which is to the at the initial workshop event in Zurich in 2019 we did invite Jeff Alexander to present his work on hirobong which he did via zoom and the hope was to have his essay in our book but it turned out not to be possible so that's certainly a gap but I think hirobong is already pretty well represented in the literature in the early post-war period around the years following the occupation so around 1952 to 1956 hirobong was was so widely consumed that the media in its own time referred to referred to the 1950s as the hirobong ji the hirobong age and as best as we can estimate the the drug was really regularly used by several million people and some of that was a holdover from the war as you mentioned there's evidence that Japanese workers were being provided with it to stimulate factory labor and come to guys apply let's as you said any kind of any kind of any kind of sorry I'm distracted by the chat now that that you have this this widespread consumption of hirobong stemming from the stemming from the pre-war period that continues into the post-war period plus sort of a surge in production that is an opportunity to earn money quickly in an age in which this was a very limited opportunity so what I think is so extraordinary about hirobong compared with with opium is that its initial popularity was so short-lived that hirobong was really an artifact of recovery in a way that opium had never been. Opium had a medical purpose that shaded over into other types of motivations for use but I think methamphetamine very much was was a sort of a tool of recovery in the sense that mobilizing against it gave the organs of civil society agency back after having been disempowered during the years of fascism and war so after the hirobong age as the Japanese economy recovers we start to see the traffic largely passing out of the hands of these mom and pop operators who have been producing and consuming most of their product who then are able to find legitimate jobs in this recovering economy and we see the hirobong traffic pass into the hands mostly of the yaksa of the Japanese underworld probably with the consent of the government so it's remained a relatively popular drug in Japan to this day a popular illegal drug but because it largely takes place out of sight in the yaksa underworld it has not been a major policy concern for most of post-war Japanese history so it hasn't threatened this idea that Japan is drug free which as we as we've tried to show is more myth than fact but has nonetheless held considerable sway over public opinion and I think that too is a big distinction with the significance of opium that excluding opium was so important to constructing the Japanese national identity the state and its institutions were dominant brokers in the traffic of opium hirobong was never like this hirobong was sort of a very fulfilled a certain time-limited function and then passed into the shadows where it was not anchored to national identity or national fisc. Yeah and it's actually a good segue to my next question which is about the yakusa so you see this move from open to hirobong and they move from illigality to the galaxy to the galaxy and again to the galaxy in a post-war and the yakusa force is something that only started to get mentioned in a post-war and we mentioned at least a Jesus soul it was as how do you princess into the solace I managed to please pronounce also German is before so equal opportunity so this chapter in the black market you know and and you please I organize crime the future prominently here but I feel it's special after the war and there's a connection to drugs emerging as being something outside of society a sub-Japan even it's foreign that's something again continuity from the people and what is the significance is something can see also in all of his work in all of the idea of drugs being foreign how did he we can see how it came about but how does it how does it go towards when how does it relate to connections post-war well I think we've already touched on this connection with drugs and foreigners a few times in this conversation so I I think it's really important to highlight that this this connection is a major theme of the book and we tried to address that in the introduction and I think that this association between drugs and outside world was present from the very beginning we haven't said much about on Andreeva chapter yet but she talks about for instance sourcing rhino horn which by necessity had to come from outside of Japan what I think is quite different in the in the transport period is that the association between drugs and the outside world passes to not not places but people so we start to see this association between narcotics band drugs and foreign nerves which sort of develops a stigma of its own and is very much a product of the imperial age and the fact that Japan has to positively differentiate itself from its subjects even all while asserting this kind of racial confraternity with Taiwanese with Koreans with other imperial subjects so in my chapter I talk a lot about the representation of of the Chinese as quote unquote addicts in literature you read writes about the stigmatization of Korean migrants to the home islands as drug users and these associations very much carry over to the post-war period when the post-war narcotics market is seen as a product of DBS foreign agents like like the Americans or like the sign each Koreans as we see in Jesus's chapter and then I think we also see this association between drugs and foreigners right up through the present oriented chapters by Bill Maraudian also by Uleg so maybe I should let Uleg talk about that the 2026 Chevrolet Equix awarded the most dependable compact SUV in the US by JD power is designed for your everyday and with available all-wheel drive you can handle your to-do list with total confidence start your building Chevrolet.ca details at JD power.com yeah I mean I could move a bit into the post-war and I mean I would actually I'm not kind of I was going to ask about you know how I'm looking at Japan the post-war you know both in their earlier peers were looking at Japan and Asia more or less when we go to the post-war I think we mentioned something earlier but like the US-Japan framework and actually I mean very I'm not so something even I would actually like you want to use Miriam's chapters a segue for this and because I mean you mentioned you know that's like I was like was somebody but and you actually you finish the chapter talking about what I'm going to use 1976 novel I'm getting a kai brew or almost transparent blue I think in English and this really kind of I think it's it sets up this kind of US Japan framework that we're looking at in the post-war for a lot of these things I mean his use so these chapters is something similar to that framework and I think what's interesting about Murakami's book I mean as Miriam points out you know this the difference is between these characters I mean they become really blurred in terms of gender nationality kind of ethnicity as well as the drugs they're using I think you point out using like nine or ten different drugs in this but also the geography you know they're kind of moving between kind of like the Japanese sovereign space and also the US airbase and like all these these things really becoming blurred kind of by the 70s but I think I think that interaction and that focus on kind of the US and Japan is quite key and if we're if we talk look at like over all these chapter you know he's really focusing on the period around 1968 he's specifically focusing on Shinjuku station which you know I mean Shinjuku the whole was kind of really a side of a clash between kind of developers and politicians looking to kind of create a new kind of glass and steel Japan I mean I guess a lot of the Shinjuku especially in the Shinjuku that we have today but you still have like the older aspects you know you have golden guy still but also like nightlife you know the sex trade the former black market and all these things that they're trying to be race really the authorities and and it builds kind of looking at all these things class symbolically but also physically you have these people kind of from around Japan attracted to I guess we we kind of call it hippie counterculture and which is also a very transnational thing but people are coming from around the country to Shinjuku even millions of tons of jet fuel are passing through the station to kind of support America's war in Vietnam so you know these things are going on above and below one another and I think it's in this environment that Bill really focuses on this specific figure of that's kind of created by the media but also the people there is known as the futon and I think it's termed that her first idle like kind of idlers or how ruthless people are dropping out from the mainstream society they're not working they're engaging the counterculture and kind of conspicuous drug use especially they're out in front of the station you know huffing paint thinner and things out of plastic bags and other other substances and this becomes a really we've a lot of photographs of this and this becomes just kind of symbol on both sides really people kind of want to become part of this don't talk to really about kind of the gendering of this as well as performative drug use but then also people want to kind of you know see this is a problem within society and I think it's kind of important to know here that you know this is a time the police and the state are really cracking down on illegal drug use in the 60s but you know paint thinner isn't illegal and huffing themselves isn't illegal in the 60s I mean some of this is abandoned in 1972 but it's just this kind of interaction and Bill is arguing there for existence of it that you need street politics it develops in Shunjuku in 68 and I think one thing that's that's quite key there is when we're not just talking about like trans-nationally or international Japan and kind of the foreign but I think what's really key is also the kind of urban and rural divide that we're looking at here and I think Bill kind of highlights this in the chapter as well where you know you have Shinjuku as kind of the epicenter of a lot of these things but you know also Tokyo Osaka versus kind of the the heartland of Japan you know the real Japan out in the countryside and I mean that's something that I think I didn't see when I'm looking into it when moving to the my chapter on kind of magic mushrooms in the kind of 1980s and 1990s you know there's a shift in associations there where I mean drugs are being seen more and more as being something something foreign and they're also seen as you know coming from other countries and going first to you know Shinjuku they're going to Shibuya they're going to Amidika Muda in Osaka and from there they're going out into the you know the real Japan the the heartland and I think there's also the foreigners of the drugs especially we're talking about things like magic mushrooms we don't really right on marijuana but it's I think there's a similar dynamic there's a big thing is a change in Japanese travel habits that happen from 1980s where you know you have the first Chikyu noori Kikata guidebook for individual travelers published in 1979 and you know it's just barely similar time in the first Lily planet comes out I think in English and you get a lot more independent travelers going around than you did before rather than packaged tours I think a number of international travelers you know is from 1985 a triples up to 1996 can reach the peak around 2000 has gone down against since then but a lot of these individual travelers you know they're they're going on a lot of the same circuits as a lot of Western travelers are and they're encountering listed substances on a lot of these journeys you know they're going to Southeast Asian Central America they're going to the same countercultural places they're seen as countercultural destinations by Western tourists you know they there's a narrative then that you know Japanese are first encountering drugs in these places which you know that the Japanese press and associates with American and European hippies I mean that's a quote essentially and then they bring this drug use back home and so the problem is coming from overseas and then coming back home and I think then we've seen other shifts in the early 2000s we touched a little bit before as various countries in Europe the Americas are legalizing drugs and then the association changes again you know you're not listening on Central America Southeast Asian are you going to Canada or more Amsterdam or you know we're more Denver and those are not the level that I can't believe this stuff yeah everybody is in Denver a couple of years ago and talk among some people I heard about how drugs are legal in Denver and so dangerous like you know you you like it's so dangerous here you you over here Japanese people are saying sometimes and never seems like a pretty decent and nice place for me to talk especially downtown I but you know they sell drugs here I had well I want to go Asia though I mean you mentioned I mean in your comments now like about you know drugs being associated with like American and Western hippies and the like in the 60s the in the 60s and again the chapters but it's also about America being like the market for Japanese drugs I mean kind of reversing this logic right in the post-war and it's again US Japan framework or Japan West-front is very important here at Japan US being the former but where does Asia go to I mean West World of Asia and all of this because Asia of course is the mark of foreigners in my duty work and some of the mirror works before and where's Asia features of this what happened to Asia for work and I think it probably depends quite a lot on the subs I think there's I think you did to me to touch on this this a bit before and I mean I think that the kind of pre-war view especially of opium and this is something that comes through in the early chapters on opium about how Japan is trying to you know see it separated itself distance itself from Asia by not having an dependency on opium and not having an opium issue not allowing opium in and saying that Japan is different that way I think what we maybe have a transition probably in the early 20th century that something like morphine is then a bit different because that is an industrial modern product right the way that is produced is very different so opioids in that sense are going to be quite different from from smoking opium and so I think that's the way you can differentiate yourself from Asian in a way even though if you're using a similar substance and I think in the post-war then I think you know if you're looking at something like methamphetamine again this is very much Japanese this is not you know the rest of something from the rest of Asia I think we if we're looking into you know what I was working on look at the kind of magic mushrooms in the 1990s in this kind of moment when they're legal a lot of people are encountering these things in Asia but it is very much through this Western lens you know they're going to the places where these Western tourists are going to coast some way because that in Thailand because that's where you know the Western there's already kind of paved the way and that's that's you know the guidebooks are all saying the same thing there's also I mean interesting distancing I think that goes on with things that are Japanese or not you know we mentioned you know obviously methamphetamine being invented by a Japanese scientist but with mushrooms for example you know where Japan is over dozen different varieties of magic mushrooms growing naturally in the country and they're all sorts of there are Japanese names for these mushrooms but actually the word in Japanese for magic mushrooms that becomes dominant I mean it is magic google mushroom right I mean it is it is written kapakan and it is essentially using a foreign word for this and and you get people looking for ancient kind of and and continuities with older practices and so there's there are people who cite there's a 12th century text which is cited quite a bit in this context where some Buddhist nuns come across some eating eating some dancing mushrooms and having a grand old time you know people like I sort of lost in the great school of the great school of college is in kind of a mushroom kind of efficient out of 1960s coming to Japan looking for Japan's ancient magic mushroom culture and there are all these people looking for continuities I don't think are really there I don't think they're there in the West either ultimately so you know people came across these things eighth and every now and then had a very bizarre time but in a time before modern medicine and such would you actually go back and do that thing again you would probably be happy that you survived whatever it was and maybe not necessarily go back so people people looking for these ancient kind of continuities I think that gets a bit tricky and so these things growing in Japan but that kind of getting denied and these being seen as foreign and I think a lot of the mushrooms are actually being sold in Japan in 1990s being imported from Netherlands actually rather than actually being grown in Japan just which is quite odd there as well I mean the last thing which is kind of related to this which I just wanted to highlight here is there's a really interesting dichotomy that emerges in the 1990s and there's some interesting ethnography that was done that really brings this out which is where people are really differentiating between drugs they're seen as natural and drugs that are being seen as chemical or I mean synthetic and there are a lot of users who and I mean this is not unique to Japan there's something in other places as well certainly but people would be willing to you know use a mushroom or marijuana see there's you know some in nature modern growing methods and fertilizers and things like that but they wouldn't use you know LSD or methamphetamine or big and a sniffing glue because these are seen as kind of man-made substances or chemicals and therefore unhealthy I mean you know there are plenty of things in nature they're pretty good for you as well but that's it's an interesting kind of dynamic there we actually see in other places as well so yeah and run did you yeah I want to ask something kind of something else yeah you want to check in oh yeah just before we move on from the the question about sort of the the importance of Asia in the post-war period I think in the early post-war period I'll just come back to Jesus article here I think I think the backdrop of the Cold War is also really essential that we have this world that is being polarized or trifurcated in a sense into sort of the first world of countries aligned with the United States the second world with Soviet Union and the non-aligned or developing world and I think that sort of the the drug history very much sort of tends to follow along that polarization with the category of Asia being folded into and almost subordinated to those that trifurcation so you have the for instance the argument throughout the pre-war period that you alluded to that John Jennings took up in his chapter that that Asia is being poisoned by Japan that drugs are the medium through which Japan is attempting to subjugate Asia in the early post-war period we have the aversion of that argument that now red China is trying to subordinate Japan which has been transformed into this Cold War ally of the United States through the medium of heroin that is is now being pushed into Japan it's all spurious obviously but it's potent rhetoric for this Cold War world that is looking for any evidence of the villainy of Mao Zedong and I think that that sort of that that importance of the Cold War context doesn't mean that Asia falls to the background but it does mean that the sort of ideological significance of Asia to Japan is filtered through that Cold War context.
Thank you yeah it's really I didn't think about it and but it only it shows again how drugs are so entangled with so many aschting than so many good drugs and anyways basically cultural or like as much as they are and partially signified as much as they are substances and speaking of culture I think we've seen at least in the US there was in Germany other places a huge shift and at least in the role of at least towards marijuana and the consumption of marijuana and the production of marijuana just in the last two three years I mean I spent a lot going between Japan and the US and every time I come back there's no dispensaries around my college now it seems that you're gonna suppress but suppress bars and two powers is the number one business in my town none of it is remotely happening in Japan no I mean there is a stereo gap here between especially in relation to marijuana like I feel there is a there's a big gap between the way Japan looks marijuana and the way the rest of the world does I mean do you see any chance of deregulation I mean I know it's very much just about future but can we be commenting a little beyond the book about what's happening now? I want to if I'm not mistaken I think we predicted that Japan would never deregulate and stay firm but I think the laws just changed and hemp products CBD is legal now in Japan just really recently it was legalized and it's it's so it was a really important point you said that drugs are constructs signifiers cultural constructs I mean hemp is a very traditional material in Japan and there's a lot all around the world now there's a nativist tendencies that you rediscover all products and of course industrial hemp was always used in Japan for for ropes and chinto rituals but cultivation was made illegal with the American occupation and so now recently I think they're deploying that there's not many farmers who know how to cultivate hemp and and the problem is of course that you it's different varieties the hemp that you smoke and hemp that you use for ropes but they're not that easy to distinguish because they look the same they smell the same and so with this nativist discourse that you need to protect the old ways of cultivating and also the legalization of CBD now CBD products things might change in Japan as well. Just to add to that I mean it's interesting because now I mean I think Denver was maybe the leader on this but Oregon also recently have legalized you know magic mushrooms to certain extent because people are looking at these especially for psychotherapy and kind of PTSD treatments and various other things and it's been an interesting development where in the Japanese case we're talking about laws and regulations and there's something I discussed in the chapter in some depth is that looking at the discourses between politicians and the newspapers which have this this been kind of moral panic around magic mushrooms and then actually the documents are being produced by kind of the health and welfare ministry where you know the doctors are saying you know we have no evidence to ban these things we have no evidence that you know these are causing all this harm where the newspapers are saying oh well they're making people jump off buildings are making their terrible for the children and you dig down these things it doesn't they're actually aren't any cases of this but it's interesting because even after they when they decide to ban them in 2002 in January I think they announced that we're gonna ban these things in June so you know make sure you go through your stocks in the next six months which seems to show that you know maybe that it wasn't such a crisis if you're giving it six months but even after they're made illegal like you know there are there's a visual documentation on the Beth Ministry of Health and Welfare's website up until you know the early 2020 has been taken down now which essentially says you know that oh yeah these things are not dangerous you know if if someone comes into your clinic and they've taken these things you know just put them in a corner for a few hours and they'll be fine as effectively the guidance that's in there and that gets taken down so it's really interesting on regulation seeing what the bureaucrats and clinical professionals are saying versus what the politicians and the media are saying and I know I'd be curious about any deregulation anytime soon yes I know it about sold in our jubonit time soon right so we're pushing beyond the one hour limit and as much as I talked more about this I think or jubonit is happening like right actually just yeah sorry just just gonna you just mentioned edible sir at the end last year I remember seeing something in Japan that effectively and this was in the news in a few different places that they had started selling various kind of gummies edible kind of THC gummies where they'd effectively managed to isolate a certain type of THC that wasn't covered by the drug laws at that time and so you could buy these things at that off Rakuten I think another place you could buy these was effectively legal for a while I think this lasted a few weeks or a couple of months and then that loophole was closed and these things were banned they didn't give them six months that time I think they gave people a week or so and so there are responses to this sort of thing so it's yeah which makes me think yeah maybe not no changes coming back quickly thank you and of course we we should mention that alcohol the legal drug is a yeah it's causing way more damage I guess medically socially otherwise and any of those things I guess so all right so yeah so maybe we can wrap up it's already very early for me to basically 720 walk up at 5.30 to get here so I want to ask the last question what's next for you again Judith I mentioned you just have any book coming out so maybe you can start with you Judith and tell us what are you gonna work with now and what's next for you and what can I expect you back so around you mentioned that we missed several substances like meh and hemp we didn't have any tap-drone hemp and cocaine also would have been important as an industrial drug before the war and unfortunately we we don't have any tap-drone cocaine so definitely it would be nice to have a follow-up and I'm hesitating I would like to continue on drugs and then another project is connected to that is the plant trade and how foreign plants came to Japan also in the long today since the 16th century starting with sunflowers and tomatoes from the Americas and going up to the late 19th century or early 20th century right yeah yeah yeah Ron I think we've talked about this I'm working on two projects at the moment when is the history of time use and time use surveys so Japan was a really early adopter of these surveys beginning a few months before Pearl Harbor and continuing through to the present it's collected every five years so I'm interested in the evolution of the surveys as a form of knowledge and also in how the daily lives of various demographic groups have changed or or not in some cases changed very much at all and I'm also writing about the history of Japanese mountaineering which more or less began dramatically abroad with with the first descent of the world's eighth highest mountains in the Himalayas in 1956 and from that point Japan really became the most active nation in the world in high-altitude climbing so I'm interested in mountaineering on its own terms but also as a form of sports diplomacy so I'm looking at how it served as a form of soft power to shape the national image and also relations with other states in the context of the Cold War. And I want to emphasize yeah I know I know you know I know but already since though so.
Not thanks. I guess yeah still mainly work on as a project as I mean obviously previous work I've done with also a couple of you on kind of history of things like Castle Samurai and how medieval symbols are used in the modern period and I'm working on book I'm gonna use grip on how putting that into global context. Well that'll be next time. Yeah putting these medieval symbols into or have to use medieval symbols putting that into a global context how Japan is kind of really engaging with global discourses on on the medieval and kind of medievalism is one thing and somewhat related to this is the long-term project I've been doing on the kind of Yasuko Nishrain's Yushukan military museum.
I've just finished an article hopefully that will come out in the next few weeks. I'm trying to reconstruct the early Yushukans which was built in the early 1880s as kind of an Italian castle and trying to reconstruct that military museum using postcards and various other things to see what it actually looked like and what function played in kind of Japan I mean it's actually really early case of that and so yeah those are kind of the main things at the moment but there's always something shiny that takes my eye and distracts me for a while. Well it's been a little business motivation museum you're oh yeah there may be a show on on Samurai I'm coming up at some point in the in the next few years that we're working on so yeah yeah Samurai will never leave me. Okay so on this note I would like to to conclude and want to thank you all for coming from different parts of the world different time zone especially before what is 1230 a year now for a very long day you're taking today right so thank you and really enjoyed this and I hope to see you here soon on mountaineering or plants, drugs or samurai or all the above and mine.
Thank you. Thank you.