Japan 2024: A Smoking Diary (1/3) (2024)

In May 2024, I travelled to Japan for the first time in six years. It’s a place I’ve either been living in or visited almost every year since 1994. I’m wary of Japan travelogues and related works. I used to work as a librarian at one of the UK’s largest collections of such books written by assorted missionaries, businessmen, diplomats, their wives and other miscreants: The Tratado of the Jesuit priest Luis Frois (1585), Englebert Kaempfer’s The History of Japan (pub. 1727) and its close relation in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Philipp Franz von Siebold’s Nippon (1832), Isabella Bird’s Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1879), Basil Hall Chamberlain’s Things Japanese (1890, alongside which I’d also suggest We Japanese by Yamaguchi Shozo/山口正造 and Frederic de Garis (1934). The editions with the insert from the International Moustache Club of the Fujiya Hotel in Hakone are worth seeking out) and innumerable forgotten tomes such as those of the esotericist Elizabeth Anne Gordon who was convinced of profound connections between Assyrian Christianity and Shingon Buddhism.

Alongside these, I would also strongly recommend the writings of the various Japanese missions abroad that took place in the 19th century, such as the diary of Vice-Ambassador Muragaki Norimasa/村垣範正, published in English as Kokai Nikki/航海日記: Diary of the first Japanese embassy to the United States. This 1860 journey to America included the celebrated Meiji reformer Fukuzawa Yukichi/福澤諭吉 amongst its retinue. The later Iwakura Mission writings of Kume Kunitake/久米邦武 which are available in various editions, the 2009 Cambridge edition being the most accessible, although a complete five volume translation was made available via Japan Documents in 2002. I’d suggest reading these as is, before encountering them as contextualised in various commentaries by Masao Miyoshi (As We Saw Them), Ian Nish (The Iwakura mission in America and Europe : a new assessment) and numerous others. The chaff discarded in the edit often turns out to be the wheat. There is a banality in sea voyages to be relished.

To these, whilst I’m about it, I would also add Miyazaki Toten/宮崎滔天 and his 1902 autobiography My Thirty Three Years’ Dream/三十三年の夢, describing his adventures as a pro-Chinese revolutionary alongside Sun Yat-sen and others. Does it connect to much of the above or indeed the below? No, not really. It’s just a great book.

There are truths in all of these, as much as there are fantasies and sometimes inventions. There are definitely mistakes. In current parlance, they are problematic. Personally, I think they are all the better for it. Why, you think upon reading, I can see all this person’s blinkers and prejudices laid out before me like an evidential table. They practically convict themselves. Sotto voce: and I am so much better than them… But you’re not. You are equally convinced of your own righteousness and how you might mould or proof your own expressions against their coming disgrace and erosion. You will not succeed. Better, write as yourself, not the projection. In other words, have the confidence of Kipling, knowing they will eventually hang you for it.

There were some racy, abstracted, damaging years in Tokyo. You should write about those, people would say, you’ve got some good stories there. I’d try and then generally throw the results away. That was a life I was keen to distance myself from. Blimey, just read some Ryū Murakamialready. That’s more or less it. As if I had anything of particular note to add to those sort of fetid narratives. Whilst there is still some mileage in published accounts of Japan lives and visits through the foreigner’s eye, that has vastly shifted into the online world of TikTok, YouTube and so on. There is no shortage of it. Metastasis. And largely still bollocks too.

So what’s my contribution here? Well, aside from the YouTuber Jacob Fucking Jones, a cigarette enthusiast who visited in 2023, there really isn’t that much information about the experience of smoking in Japan as a visitor, particularly following the legislation that was introduced in the period of the 2019 Rugby World Cup and the 2020/21 Tokyo Olympics, which accelerated the shift from a culture that was broadly tolerant of smoking to one that is increasingly hostile. I’ve been working on a book about smoking culture that includes a significant section on Japan. It is after all somewhere I have smoked a considerable number of cigarettes over the years. Some of the following material may be recycled into that work, much of it is not relevant to that work at all. My style is frequently ponderous, if not pompous, I am long-winded, I meander. Mea culpa. Als Ik Kan.

At the time of writing this introduction, I am about halfway through writing the diary. So far there are numerous truths, perhaps a few fantasies, but no inventions, as yet.

It takes some time to locate the hotel. Gatwick Airport is spread over two terminals, North and South, connected by various road systems, internal and external, as well as a frequent rail shuttle for foot passengers. I have mistaken the signage for the Hilton hotel as my hotel. No. I am turned back.

Hampton by Hilton, my hotel, is in the North. The Hilton is the South. Is it Hampton Court, Henry VII's palace passed on by Cardinal Wolsey, or The Hamptons, Weekend at Bernie's and Grey Gardens?

Its entrance is internal to the North Terminal, just to the side of the phalanx of self-service check-ins stretching along the western wall. An umbilical Kubrick walkway connects the two locations across a service road.

SMOKING TIP ONE: Airport smoking in UK is chiefly restricted to the external concourses by Departures/Arrivals, commonly at their extreme ends away from the entrances. There may be some cover from the rain beneath a modest shelter or architectural extrusion. Perhaps not. There is rarely anywhere to sit down. No one hangs. This is somewhere for a final gasper before heading through security. There is generally some marking on the pavement delineating the official smoking zone which is often overspilled when crowded. Staff patrol with varying degrees of officiousness but are often themselves aloof. They too smoke or vape when off duty.

There is no smoking area provided by Hampton by Hilton. I didn't anticipate one. The rooms are exclusively no smoking as is the case for almost all UK hotel rooms in the 21st century. You need to head to the smoking zones in front of International Departures, one level up. As these go, they are not unpleasant. You have a fair vista of buildings and activity to gaze upon and there are two areas provided, one at either side of the entrances.

Later in the evening, my wife and I smoke a final cigarette here before bed. A drunken man stumbles into view, he's filming us for his TikTok, he says. Hello. I'm taking my father's ashes back to the Isle of Man. I'm just waiting for my daughter to turn up. I meet him again the following morning for my final pre-flight cigarette with his face freshly bruised and cut. He stumbled on the escalators. They wouldn't let me into any of the hotels. I slept on benches and the floor. She'll be here soon.

I'm flying to Narita (Tokyo) via Shanghai. China Eastern, along with other Chinese carriers, are flying the former direct route over Russia that others abandoned following the invasion of Ukraine. They are now taking longer, more expensive polar routes. The cost of the Chinese flight is almost half of its European competitors and the total flight time is near identical. I guess I have therefore become a war profiteer.

My wife and I part. She features very little in this narrative. I think about her much more than I do about smoking, but this is not the place for that.

SMOKING TIP TWO: Whereas many European and other international airports provide public smoking areas port side, i.e. after security, the UK does not officially. However, there is a need of these by staff and crew. Some of these are accessible to passengers. Others are not. They are not marked on most of the public maps, although there may be limited signage at some point. So where are they? Well, you can find some information on various smoking forums, but largely we smokers don't discuss these places openly as we're anxious that access might be withdrawn if they became general public knowledge. Is there such a location in North Terminal, Gatwick? Not as far as I know.

It's not that I am a particularly heavy smoker. Five, maybe ten cigarettes a day, depending on circumstances. Certainly not the forty or sixty consumed by those long past. A ten hour flight doesn't fill me with worry about how I can sneak in a fag somehow or another. I don't particularly miss smoking on planes, although I do mourn a little that collective packet rustle, light, and sigh when the no smoking sign was turned off and the cloud would drift into the abstemious sections.

Stealth vaping is fairly easy to get away with, but it's not permitted. I was trying out some tobacco free snus, which was a good substitute for real snus. Snus, like smoking, is not a readily pleasant experience. Waves of rich, salty saliva that you might gag on at first but in time learn to savour. I did it just the once, just to break the monotony beyond the Urals. The map didn't enable me to zoom in on those Siberian villages and outposts, let alone Mongolia or China, whisper their names as I tried to work out the fractions of the journey completed so far, 5/8ths, 7/9ths...

SMOKING TIP THREE: You cannot take lighters into China. I had to abandon mine at Shanghai transit security. Only ever travel with a cheap, non-jet, disposable. Poor you if you thought you might show off your favourite Dupont or Dunhill on holiday. You could put these in hold luggage but for full compliance they would need to be empty of all gas, with ignition disabled, and, no, you can't put a handy can of butane in there with them. If you're a Zippo user, this gets complicated as you can't empty them of fluid. You'll need to take out all the cotton/rayon stuffing and dispose of it. And the wick too. Ditto with the fuel. That's not coming with you. For those often reliant on specialist lighters, such as pipe smokers, this is a harsh imposition.

Well, I wondered, how do you got about getting a light? Fear not. Smoking in China is a significantly more present activity than it is in Europe. I knew there would be a smoking area somewhere and providence took me past a directing sign with an hour remaining before boarding the Tokyo leg.

It was a caged area at ground level outside the building. Lighters were held static in locked steel boxes, with just enough access to the button and shroud to engage. Somebody had to design theses things. They were substantial objects. Maybe they use the surrendered lighters in them? But variance in size and design might prove tricky. In fact, it seems that Pudong airport operates a free lighter service at arrivals where the contraband articles are returned to circulation. Nice.

You want a cigarette, but you don't need one. You need one, but you don't want it. You have no idea of the time. Your sense is muddled. It's something to do. Too early for the duty-free shops or cafés. Thai workers puffed away at one end of the cage. A man from my flight sparked a Marlboro red. I was smoking a roll-up, a Latakia blend. Hand-rolled cigarettes don't work so well in the more humid East Asian atmospheres of May, let alone rainy seasons. Perhaps that should be a tip. I thought of little. I was between places and zones. I'd worry about being present once I got to Tokyo. Shanghai was not a place to disassemble.

I slept most of the way there, breezed through immigration, collected my suitcase, then a mobile wifi dongle, pausing briefly at a convenience store for a soft drink and some cigarettes. But what to buy? Well, you're on holiday. Smoke local. I'd generally go with Seven Stars, but I thought I'd give Hi-Lites a chance for once.

SMOKING TIP FOUR: There is a vast range of cigarettes in Japan. You used to be able to buy these freely from vending machines, but from 2008 these were only operable on presentation of a Taspo smart card for age verification. These cards are not available to non-residents. As a tourist, you're reliant on human points-of-sale: convenience stores (konbini/コンビニ), supermarkets and tobacconists. Konbini are fairly ubiquitous in urban areas and generally, but not always, open 24 hours. The packets are on open display above or behind the tills and each variety is numbered so if you don't speak Japanese, you can still order easily enough. The packets have yet to go generic. The konbini have inched out many of the former cig and booze vending machines, as well as the mom-and-pop stores that faded with the end of Shōwa era in 1989. Lighters, portable ashtrays and such are generally sold in the aisle sections. When purchasing cigarettes, you need to touch the customer side of the sales screen when requested to confirm you are of suitable age, above 20.

But why Hi-Lites? What was the basis for my decision? Well, it was a question of history. The history of tobacco in Japan and my own personal history of smoking in the country. Let’s start with the second half of that. My history. I first came to Japan in 1994 as part of my first year studying Japanese at university. Provided we had passed the half-year language exam, we left the UK to study for a term at the Hokkaido University of Education, a teacher training facility, not to be confused with the more illustrious Hokkaido University located in the centre of Sapporo. Our campus was not there. There was a lengthy journey from home into the centre of Sapporo and back out again to the campus at Ainosato/あいの里, a place I soon personally christened as Anus Atoll. Buttfuck nowhere.

I’d have been smoking roll-ups at the time, most probably Drum or Samson, Dutch and Flemish halfzware (medium strong) blends. But rolling tobacco was hard to find in Japan and aroused too much intrigue as to what you were smoking. I soon swapped to Mild Seven or sometimes my English girlfriend’s preference, Marlboro Lights. I largely stuck with Mild Seven until 2012 when they rebranded as Mevius. The inclusion of the word mild was becoming problematic in some overseas markets. Brand names couldn’t make claims about the product. I’d been fairly content with the name Mild Seven, but Mevius was a cartoon character, part forgotten Greek god or sci-fi character keen for world domination. The vast gleaming forehead of the Mekon. No, Mevius was done. I switched to Seven Stars.

The smoking ban in the UK came into force on July 1, 2007. This is the law that brought an end to smoking indoors, in the pub, the cafe or restaurant as well as the office or workplace. But the move towards a non-smoking culture had begun some years before then. In the early 90s around 30% of the UK population were still smoking. It’s now around 13%. Over the same period Japan is a little higher. It was around 45% of the population in the mid-90s and is currently 17% and falling.

In other words, smoking is done. It is still present and will continue to persist in some manner, but it will no longer be an activity that can be considered part of mass, national culture. It just doesn’t have the numbers anymore. It becomes a subculture. I’ve grown ever more fascinated with this extinction of smoking as a phenomenon. Once we were giants, and now lumbering brontosauri about to collapse from emphysema, wheezing to extinction. What are we about to lose?

So, again, why Hi-Lites? Well, I’d been smoking Seven Stars for a long time. They were a brand I associated with Japan in the 70s and 80s. They had a strong visual presence via adverts and commercials and the design was great. They were the first brand to use a charcoal filter on their launch in 1969. Does that make any difference? I’ve no idea. Japan has lead the world in various cigarette technologies to control the flow, flavour, smoke and other aspects of the experience and consumption.

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Seven Stars map readily onto the economic boom that leads into the Bubble Period that had burst just a few years before my initial arrival in the country. Hi-Lites were launched in 1960. The first king size filter brand in Japan with cellophane wrapping and an astonishing success. The design, the colour and serif font, all contribute to my impression of it being a cool, jazz sort of cigarette. It feels like a Blue Note album cover. The design was by Wada Makoto/和田誠, a prolific illustrator of the period, who would himself design numerous jazz album covers over the years.

Yes, but why? Well, I don’t like to be too consistent in my tobacco choices. It’s good to mix things around. But as smoking declines, so too does the range of products on offer. The quality and range of UK cigarettes in 2024 is fairly poor. These are nicotine delivery systems rather than products of any particular quality. Where there was once a choice of cigarettes from cheap to luxury, with various blends of tobacco and experiences, the current arc will probably conclude in one single state-approved cigarette in mild or regular editions. Nobody cares.

Japan has yet to go that far. You can still buy menthols, banned in Europe since 2020. Moreover, Japanese cigarettes do not yet fully observe the legal guidance that each cigarette should be capped at 10mg of tar and 1mg of nicotine. So Hi-Lites are 17mg (tar) and 1.4mg (nicotine). Seven Stars are 14/1.2. So they’ve got more poke and they have more flavour. In the case of Hi-Lites, the tobacco has some rum essence to it. It’s a really nice cigarette and I was glad to have made the change for the two weeks I’d be there. I’m smoking them now as I write this and, well, then they’ll be gone. Overall my impression is that Japanese tobacco still gives a shit at some level about the quality of its product, particularly in these near heritage brands like Seven Stars, Hi-Lites andothers.

I guess that where Hi-Lites had once looked like an old man cigarette to me, a little too retro in faster times, I was now almost that old man. I’d always admired that wartime generation that grew up in the forties and fifties. I was a student of Japanese history and they knew that history, whereas my peers and their younger equivalents generally claimed ignorance. I’d chat in local parks to people born in Manchuria or Sakhalin. I admired their surprisingly jaunty, almost mismatched, retirement style of dress much more than the youth streetwear of the period. They had lived through something beyond than the surface of things.

SMOKING TIP FIVE: Cigarettes in Japan are cheap. Seven Stars are ¥600, Hi-Lites are ¥520, Mevius ¥580. That is around £3.25 or less a packet. 20 Marlboro in the UK will currently cost you £15.60 at Tescos. So why not explore a little? You’ll hardly see any of these brands back in the UK and even those you do recognise are sold here in domesticated Japanese variants. There is a lower tier of still cheaper Japanese cigarettes and, don’t quote me, I think only Wakaba and Echo remain of these. These had to reinvent themselves as “little cigars”to avoid a tax hike, so they were rolled in processed tobacco paper that was legally defined as leaf. They remained cigarette sized and with filters. Hang on, looks like Wakaba have gone even in the little cigar version. Smoke ‘em while you’ve got ‘em. These proletarian Shōwa mainstays aren’t fit for purpose in these sparkling 21st century Reiwa times!

The airport express stops at Ueno. I get off and find myself at street level, just by the southern tip of the park. What’s changed? In my Tokyo years, Ueno was the place to buy illicit telephone cards for international calls as well as other services. The stereotype was Iranian refugees up to no good. You could buy hash or crystal, pills and such, even opium. TV specials would visit the area around the park, the green honk of night vision cameras, trying to score, indicate the offenders, bolstering the idea that any methamphetamine boom of the period was the result of these pernicious foreign agents rather than domestic business interests. In a WhatsApp world, no one needs phone cards anymore. I guess they still need meth, but I wasn’t going to stand on the corner until I could smell it. I hailed a taxi.

Hotel Review: MYSTAYS Asakusa, 1-21-11 Honjo, Sumida-ku, Tokyo 130-0004

“A fantastic location in one of the world’s best cities. Light, bright and with some of Tokyo’s best views, you can overlook the Tokyo Skytree® from your HOTEL MYSTAYS Asakusa Tokyo Skytree View room. With our prime location, the city is yours to explore!”

Well, this is not Asakusa, despite the name. This hotel is on the other side of the Sumida river, about a twenty minute walk from Asakusa central of Sensō-ji/浅草寺 temple and about the same toOshiage. It’s a sleepy sort of area with not a whole lot going on. That’s a definite plus. There’s a convenience store a short walk away as well as a decent supermarket, Summit. As for restaurants, well, the hotel is located directly above a reasonable enough Indian called Doli. Others are dotted around the area, but the location really isn’t any sort of centre for eating, drinking or entertainment. If local buses scare you, it’s a short walk across the bridge to Kuramae metro station on the Ōedo and Asakusa lines. There was a very modest view of Skytree from my second floor window. I hate it anyway. I’d send my wife daily updates of me flicking V-signs at it from numerous vantage points.

The hotel has been recently renovated. The extent of that update in any given room is variable. Some aspects of my room were contemporary, but the bathroom and other fixtures were 80s, maybe even older. Beyond basic facilities, such as a laundry room, the hotel doesn’t offer much to guests. Hence the reasonable price. You’ll need to keep the room tidy and dispose of your own rubbish. I was perfectly happy here.

SMOKING TIP SIX: There are still smoking rooms available in many Japanese hotels but these are frequently not offered to you via non-Japanese booking sites. If you’re after one, I’d advise using the hotel’s own website. The reductions offered via booking sites are generally illusory on closer comparison with the hotel's actual prices.

There was no escaping the tobacco funk of the room. I’m sure the place is sprayed down with various fresheners and deodorisers between guests, but even with the air purifier on, there was no escaping it. A historical scent built up over many years of usage. A few design fixtures attempted to hide the room’s assuredly late Shōwa origins. A patina now sunk beneath the improvements you could neither scrape off nor neutralise.

You can imagine all manner of assignations, pleasant and horrific, in a love hotel. Some might be romantic, delicate and touching, whereas others based on straightforward transactions of capital. It’s not that people don’t stay in business hotels for similar purposes, but I could only readily imagine the lonely salesman, meeting clients and suppliers by day, perhaps evenings out with such, but at some point, a solitary series of moments in a room, the transitions marked by the lighting and extinction of a cigarette.

I relished the Hi-Lites I smoked there. There was a richness to the smoke and I regretted not having taking them up sooner. I didn’t go out in the evenings. The jet lag had me awake at around 3am. I arrived on Wednesday afternoon. The day contained little more than a nap on arrival, a visit to the supermarket and a return to the hotel and a bath. I’ve always liked these boxy and compact toilet, bath and shower spaces. I imagine the hundreds of thousands that must have been ripped out of other business hotels for more contemporary versions. I’d long fancied having one at home. A space you can throw water around in with no fear of flooding neighbours or staining the ceiling below.They are the closest I will ever get to living on a space station or the now vanished Nakagin Capsule Tower.

Thursday was a little more adventurous. I returned to Ueno and the shops around Ameyoko. One key purpose to my journey was buying new spectacles and the process of examination, selection and fitting the various frames took almost two hours. I leafed through vintage copies of Asahi Graph between stages. I smoked a Hi-Lite just inside the corner of Ueno Park where I’d stood the day before. My first official smoking spot in Japan and a convenient enough low wall to sit on too. Pleasant enough in the open air and sun. I made way on towards Ginza.

Toraya had moved location and was an even smaller presence than on my last visit ten years ago. Their Asakusa branch closed last year.Specialist hatters and tobacconists are not unrelated. They are both in terminal decline. The economic stagnation that followed the end of the Bubble Period meant that these businesses still have a visual presence in various sleepy shopping arcades or shōtengai/商店街 and local neighbourhoods, even if closed down, whereas they have almost entirely vanished in the UK.

But the generation that established these businesses, when selling hats or fags for a living might have seemed like a good idea rather than a mental delusion, are leaving us and whatever the nostalgic attractions for some Japanese - the concepts of Shōwa Retro/昭和レトロ or even Taishō Roman(ce)/大正ロマン - gawping alone does not provide a sustainable income. Many newly launched nostalgic food courts and shopping micro-zones are entirely novel constructions. Tear it down, to rebuild once more.

The business had started in 1917. These were boom years for hats and cigarettes. I have an old catalogue of theirs from the 30s somewhere here, but I can’t find it. There was a specific hat I was after, what they describe as a Kurosawa cap. It’s a marine style in a blue cotton twill called katsuragi, close to a denim, and was often worn by the film director over the years. Hours later, in the very early morning, time passed as I tried to work out why the label inside described it as a São Tomé cap.

I finally located a photograph of a musician performing in Tchiloli street theatre, an island tradition I knew almost nothing about. He was wearing one. AHA! In fact, this was the name of the maker, シャポー・サオトメ/Chapeau Sao Tome but even that seemed as if it just might be some play on 早乙女 (read: saotome) or young rice maiden. Thanks, jet lag.

Anyway, a hat diary is a separate thing. Let’s get back to smoking.

I’d seen the smoking culture shift over the years. Without getting too mired in difference, let alone différance, the main distinction between the UK and Japan’s smoking evolution over the years was that of inside and outside. Now, this conceptual pairing of purportedly exclusive opposites will be familiar to any student of Japanese culture. Ah, yes, it’s your old friends, uchi and soto! 内&外. The inside and outside. Good cop/bad cop. Various lectures and lessons over the years.

They remind me of a presentation made at a 2002 UK conference by the American historian Herbert P. Bix of his biography Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (2001). Bix was rather indignant about various aspects of the Emperor, particularly his degree of culpability in wartime. This was absolute for Bix. For someone who’d grown up in a republic, perhaps so, for us Brits, much of this seemed like so much whatever. The Queen Mother had died only the week before. Whatever our personal degree of sympathy or antipathy towards a constitutional monarchy, we were largely immune or at least accustomed to the outpourings of the media at such times of national mourning.

I feel much the same about uchi and soto as it was taught. Is that it? Isn’t that just how things are everywhere? It was the similarity of Japan that struck me at first, not so much the Topsyturvy-Dom of Mrs E.S. Patton’s 1896 monograph. It was the nearness of things, but not quite.

The UK, and most of Europe, moved people outdoors. No longer able to smoke at desks or in bars, they would have to go out onto the streets and corners. At this point there is still not so much legislation as to where you can smoke in the open air, although there are rumblings.

I’d first noticed the shift in Osaka around 2000. Signs appeared along busy roads and intersections in business and entertainment areas. It made sense. These places were crowded and could do without the litter and fug.

I walked from Toraya into the thick of Ginza proper. The streets were fairly filled, notably with bag laden tourists and foreigners. It might have been the very favourable exchange rate. I couldn’t recall seeing so many enthusiastic non-Japanese shoppers before. I bought some pants and socks in Muji and Uniqlo and with a wave of exhaustion upon me, I returned to the hotel, slept, awoke, ate, slept again.

On the Friday I went to see a performance of bunraku/文楽, the puppet theatre. I’d never seen them perform outside of Osaka. Aside from rest periods and nationwide tours, bunraku performances alternate monthly between Osaka and Tokyo locations. The National Theatre is located just by the western edge of the moat around the Imperial Palace, near the Hanzōmon Gate, and not far from the governmental sprawl around the Diet building. But the building was being restored, so the May bunraku in Tokyo was taking place up north at a theatre atop the Marui department store in Kita-Senju, a much more down at heel sort of area.

I know more about bunraku than I’m prepared to admit here. Let’s face it, if I start writing about bunraku, the focus of this essay turns another way entirely. I really am trying to keep it fixed on smoking. I knew the performance would last for around four hours in total with numerous breaks. It’s very common for bunraku, and its sisterly relation kabuki/歌舞伎, to be a selection of scenes chosen from various plays. Of the two puppet programs offered in May, I’d chosen this one as I knew it would have a bit more variety to it and, whatever my enthusiasms, there was a danger of drifting off to sleep at some point or another.

Although there are some complex mechanisms for the puppets in bunraku - independently waggled eyebrows, hidden fox-spirit faces and so on - I don’t think they ever developed one for smoking that goes as far as exhaling puffs or clouds (but see photo below). But the puppets do smoke. Smoking tobacco in a long-stemmed kiseru pipe became a popular activity in Tokugawa Japan and the puppets behave no differently. It’s possible that such a mechanism may have existed at some point or was at least attempted. In earlier centuries there had been numerous puppet troupes, each vying with the other for custom and fancy tricks were as much an attraction as the actual repertory on offer. The so-called Shakespeare of Japan, Chikamatsu Monzaemon/近松門左衛門, wrote chiefly for puppets.

But where would I smoke between scenes? The National Bunraku Theatre in Osaka had a small smoking booth inside the building. I’d been in it innumerable times. But the floor plan of Theatre 1010 didn’t reveal any such provision. I’d have to head out of the theatre and find somewhere nearby.

SMOKING TIP SEVEN: So how do you find the approved smoking spots around Tokyo and elsewhere? You can try Google Maps. The word is kitsuenjo/喫煙所 (kitsuenjo). Search using the Japanese, although English words like “smoking” might bring up a few results. But so far the record of these is patchy on Google and, if you don’t read Japanese, there are conflicting results where you might be directed to a tobacconist or similar rather than an actual smoking spot proper. There are various apps available that should tell you, but these can be hard to download if your phone is localised to your country of origin. I used a straightforward website from Club JT that indicated a mapped location relative to me as well as their opening times. Beyond the entertainment districts, not so many are twenty four hour.

The smoking spot outside the theatre was easy enough to find. It was where twenty or so people at any one time were malingering on the concourse of the pedestrian overpass behind a modesty of screens. The area was open, not shielded from the sun or rain. I could stand there watching a preview of the bunraku on a nearby advertising screen. Again, pleasant enough.

Saturday took me over to Kagurazaka/神楽坂 for a lunch appointment. Like Chikamatsu as so-called Shakespeare, this is so-called Little France or Paris. It’s where the Lycée was once located and it remains the site of the Institut Français. That Frenchness spread. It’s a rather charming slope of cobbled back streets and both former and ongoing pleasure quarter that had serviced the nearby but now vanished Edo Castle. That complex was replaced by the Imperial Palace. On Saturdays, the main street is closed for traffic, affording pedestrians the chance to spread out as they saunter between snacks and shops.

I had an hour or so to kill. There was a kissaten I’d visited once in the area. It was definitely smoking then. But it turned out to be closed that day. Oh well. A further permanent closure I noted was the Iidabashi Ginrei Hall. A popular repertory cinema. That Delonesque silhouette of the sign. You could watch two films on a single ticket. And once upon a time you could smoke all the way through. Il y avait autrefois…

So I headed to a branch of Doutor, a national coffee chain which is a safe bet at this point for a smoking area of some description. I didn’t know whether this was a change across all branches, but there was no more seating within the smoking zone. Previously there’d be a partitioned area on the 2nd or 3rd floor. You could smoke and drink at the same time at your table. No more. I could do both but not simultaneously. You can smoke in the booth but you can’t take your drink in there. That’s an uncomfortable divorce of Coffee and Cigarettes. Suck it up.

SMOKING TIP EIGHT: Cafés are no longer the natural home of smoking. Businesses such as Doutor are standing strong, but many chains provide no internal smoking area at all. As a general rule, no contemporary breezy looking space with baristas is going to let you smoke. It’s the old school places you need to head for. These are called 喫茶店/kissaten. The history and culture of these places is a whole other essay. Many still permit smoking, but it’s hard to establish whether they do or not without visiting them. You can scour the internet for internal photos posted on review sites. Those look like ashtrays, there’s a packet of fags on the table, there’s even an official sign on the door in one shot advising that smoking takes place within. But that place in Kagurazaka had switched policy in the six months between the photo and my presence outside. Damn it. It’s just not conducive for many businesses to carry on as smoking environments. The numbers might work for some, but not so many. It’s a floating world gone up in flames. Tara has fallen. Atlanta burns.

I enjoyed a long and leisurely French lunch with a friend and we headed off to Yūrakuchō/有楽町 for more spectacle shopping. I paused at one of the suggested Club JT spots across from Iidabashi station. A narrow compartment of yellowed posters and walls. Not pleasant. But Yūrakuchō promised a different sort of experience at a one of a chain of smoking spots called The Tobacco. According to the English page on their site, they are:

An elegant yet relaxed space where discerning people gather.

Our goal is to create the most inviting smoking experience in Japan. A brand-new space where non-smokers and smokers blend, a place to co-exist. Offering comfortable and stylish ambiance sets us apart.

THE TOBACCO creates an unprecedented intertwining of the worlds of smokers and non-smokers.

A new tobacco culture starts here and now.

Look, they were saying, or so it seemed to me, some people smoke. They can’t smoke on the street anymore. Let’s give them somewhere at least half pleasant and free from grime to do that. No need to turn them into outcasts or pariahs. There were vending machines and seats in the one I visited and no less than three employees inside. I had no idea how they were making their money, if at all. There was a small selection of branded goods, including a look-book of people smoking that also features on their Instagram page. Hmmm, people looking cool and attractive while smoking outdoors! The thing you can’t really do so much anymore in Tokyo. At least, not on a whim.

The raised ashtrays in concrete blocks at the Yūrakuchō branch had me in mind of the hand of the architect Andō Tadao/安藤忠雄. For the record, they didn’t take cash for the goods and the contactless payment systems were Japan only. In the end one of the staff helpfully paid on my behalf and I handed him the money.

The company behind The Tobacco is Cosodo Inc, a consultancy that specialises in smoking areas and related signage. There’s something of an interview with CEO Yamashita Goro/山下悟郎 here in English and a Japanese presentation below.

I was impressed by the concept of more welcoming, non-hostile locations for smoking. Places that function as a destination, each with their own distinct design. I’m not sure that it’s anything that the UK would ever implement, particularly since current legislation does not permit smoking indoors. The general direction of smoking policy here is exclusion, notably the recent move to the Smoke-Free Generation, by which no one born in or after 2009 will ever be able to legally purchase tobacco products although it’s not clear as yet if they can possess them. A policy that has cross-party support and is sure to be made law regardless of the results of the forthcoming general election.

There might be some comparison here with legal shooting galleries for drug addicts. With tobacco use ever more problematic and its users increasingly cast as pariahs, why not shift them indoors out of sight where they won’t be littering the streets or hanging out on the corners? But as numbers ever more decline with that coming legislation, I can’t imagine UK policy ever developing beyond varying shades of fuck you. After all these years of loyal excise paying duties too. Shanks!

We continued on towards Asakusa and paused at Marukin, a tobacconist I’d spotted on Google Maps and that had received further recommendation from a friendly Tokyo contact. There was one product in particular that I was looking for. Peace. Ideally in a can.

If Seven Stars smoothed their way in after Hi-Lites, the 60s into 70s, Peace were the postwar brand of national resurrection for the aspirant classes. They are also the very last Japanese plain cigarette brand still available. Plain in this context means no filter. Plain cigarettes have almost entirely vanished from the smoking market around the world. I sense that plain Peace will vanish soon too so I was hugely relieved to see them behind the counter. They had not been stocked by any of the convenience stores I had visited.

Plain Peace are better known as short Peace/ショートピース. They’ve only ever come in a packet of ten, an old school hull-and-slide, or a sealed can of fifty, aka can Peace/缶ピース. As previously noted, Japan does not yet fully observe the guidance on capping tar and nicotine levels. Short Peace are the strongest cigarette on the market: tar is 28mg and nicotine 2.3mg. You can possibly get stronger in Indonesia or elsewhere, but there’s nothing left like this in the European market. The plain Gitanes and Gauloises now on offer are just echoes of their former potency.

SMOKING TIP NINE: How to smoke Short Peace. Maybe you’ve never smoked a plain cigarette. There are some things to bear in mind. The lack of a filter means that strands of tobacco can potentially spill out of the end into your mouth, but Peace are expertly packed and not prone to this behaviour. The greater danger is that the cigarette end will absorb saliva from your lips and the paper will stick. You start to take the cigarette from your mouth but it tears at the skin and the motion of removal continues your fingers along the length of the cigarette and across the burning tip. Ouch. William S. Burroughs wrote about this smoking clusterfuck, it was possibly a Players Navy Cut, but I can’t remember where. The easiest way to avoid this painful disaster is by using a cigarette holder. This way you have a mouthpiece to drool over, not the paper of the cigarette itself. I’d recommend their use. They have many other advantages, but again, that’s another essay. Since Short Peace are more or less three European cigarettes at once, I’d advise sitting down when smoking until you habituate to the higher nicotine level. The experience deserves a more reflective approach. These cigarettes are gorgeous. They are not long for this world.

There’s plenty one could write about Peace. The 1952 re-design by the French-American Raymond Loewy in particular, who had also done the white packet reworking of Lucky Strike. Filter Peace followed not long after and various other Peace variations are now available at the upper end of tobacco pricing, such as The Peace which recognises the 10mg/1mg convention and comes in a nice tin to try and make up for its lack of oomph. I don’t doubt that Short Peace will be phased out soon. The brand can continue in these lesser powered iterations.

If you want to do a Mishima drag act, you’ll need Short Peace in hand. During the infamous debate at the Tokyo University All Campus Joint Struggle Committee/東大全共闘 on May 13, 1969, he smoked at least four packets. Indeed, the cigarettes, their lighting and cadging, are an integral aspect of the performance. Related scenes played out in America as I was in Tokyo, but the student occupation sites had signs forbidding the smoking of tobacco, the use of vapes and so on. Temporary Autonomous Zones policed by your disapproving auntie. Fuck that for a game of soldiers. Tut, tut, comrades. Noblesse oblige…

(But if you don’t like Mishima, you can do what Japanese terrorists did and repurpose the empty cans for an explosive device.)

I bought two of them to take home, a couple of packets to smoke during my stay, and various hitherto unknown brands of rolling tobacco. I failed to visit various other Tokyo sellers, but I can recommend Marukin as a welcoming, knowledgeable tobacconist. No idea how much English is spoken by the owners.

For my final day in Tokyo, Sunday, I took a walk out to the nearby Tobacco and Salt Museum - tabasahio, for short - that backs onto a major factory site for Japan Tobacco (JTI) or 日本たばこ産業株式会社. Born from the former state monopolies, this company has grown to be one of the significant international players in the market. A third of its stock is still retained by the Japanese government. The museum was founded in 1978 and was a fixture in Shibuya until the move over to Sumida in 2015.

Tobacco in Japan dates to the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in 1549 and the various foreign traders who followed behind. The later Tokugawa Shogunate made various attempts to control and ban the practice as its popularity spread. Unlike Christianity, prosecution and punishment seems to have been significantly less enforced or pursued. Domestic production spread and a variety of local cultivars were developed.

Legend has the early adopters of smoking being the kabukimono/かぶき者, flashy ne'er-do-wells of the 16th century and following, who dressed in ostentatious outfits but might well do you over if they caught you looking. I’m a dandy highwayman, indeed. Smoking was one marker of their difference. This was done with the long stemmed pipe called a kiseru/キセル/煙管, somewhat akin to the European clay pipe. Japanese tobacco for the kiseru is cut exceptionally finely, down to strands of about 0.1 mm. In the early period of popularity, larger and more substantial pipes were used as threatening cudgels or shillelaghs. Laws forbade the carrying of swords outside the samurai class, but not smoking accoutrements of preposterous sizes by others.

The museum is fairly rich in these pipes and related objects and the special exhibition area was taken up with a display called Pouch Merchants that Evolved with the Times - From Tobacco Pouches to Handbags (a little better in Japanese as 時代とあゆむ袋物商　たばこ入れからハンドバッグまで, well certainly no earnest sense of a haaandbag…) . Pipes needed cases for carrying, as did the tobacco. Japanese netsuke, those well-known antique objects of collection, were one by-product of the practice. They were helped attach these cases to belts and such. Many of these objects in the museum’s collection are assuredly luxurious in design and manufacture.

The actual smoking process required a box of embers for lighting as well as for disposal of the ash. The bowls became relatively small over time, allowing just a few puffs before finishing. The social act of smoking, something proffered to customers and guests, developed its own etiquette and form akin to the tea ceremonies that also developed during the period.

Sadly, although the museum provides a very pleasant smoking room for visitors, there was no kiseru smoking master on hand to lead you through the process. I’ve never tried it. I’d like to one day, but I feel it’s something that needs a level of knowledge to which I don’t have access without instruction. I’ve only seen anyone smoking a kiseru on a couple of occasions. It’s an absolute affectation by this point - no harm in that - rather like riding a penny farthing or firing an arquebus. The man in the Asakusa tobacconist had pointed out that the two commercial brands of kiseru tobacco he had on offer were actually both made under licence in Germany despite the assuredly wa/和 style of the packaging.

I’m not going to describe the museum in intimate detail. If you want an idea of the space, Jacob F. Jones’ YouTube of his visit is as good a look-see as you will get. There are some impressive additions such as the Mayan gate, but it was really the Japanese cigarettes that I was after. At least, I thought it was. There are numerous drawers and stacked displays around the place. I spent a good ten minutes flicking through packets from Albania, Burkina Faso, Cameroon… Expertly sandwiched beneath glass like butterflies. I was visiting with two friends, one a professor of Japanese history and the other of economics. As non-smokers, I don’t think they quite shared my addictive zeal for the subject, but they were certainly tolerant.

Smoking is not a topic that has been satisfactorily addressed in historiography. Coverage of the topic can be rather patchy, if excellent in some areas, such as Tricia Starks’ work on smoking in Russia and the Soviet Union. The museum has hosted various conferences on the topic and there’s a range of their publications available in the gift shop. If you’re a student looking for an unexamined area in Japanese history or culture, I’d strongly suggest it for consideration. Provided you were happy with the arrangement - I’d be perfectly willing - I suspect there may well be a substantial level of postgraduate funding available via Japan Tobacco.

The Japanese cigarette section leads with an examination of the Meiji era tobacco barons. The museum proposes three candidates: Murai Kichibe/村井吉兵衛 (1864-1926), Iwaya Matsuhei/岩谷松平 (1849-1920) and Chiba Matsubei/千葉松兵衛 (1864-1926). Has anything substantial been written about these characters in a language other than Japanese? No. Are they important figures? Absolutely. You don’t have to be a keen or lapsed smoker to appreciate just how massive an industry tobacco was and to some extent still remains. A social or economic history of Japan - anywhere really - that does not address the topic has failed.

Of these three, Iwaya is the most colourful. His cigarettes and tobacco products were chiefly reliant on domestic production, as opposed to imported, for his Tengu/天狗 brand. He was the first supplier of so-called Imperially Gifted Tobacco/恩賜のたばこ, cigarettes issued by the Imperial Household to deserving citizens and guests and definitely not available in the shops. A profligate womaniser, he fathered at least fifty three children. He became the brand, dressing himself and extensive family in tengu red outfits and riding a carriage in the same coloured livery. It is perhaps apocryphal, but the sight of this carriage and Iwaya’s greetings from it are reported to have inspired Mitsunaga Hoshio/光永星郎, the founder of the advertising giant Dentsu.

His chief rival, Murai, engaged in an extensive advertising war with Tengu. A portion of his enormous wealth funded the building of the Chōrakukan/長樂館 villa in Kyoto, a peach of late Meiji architecture from 1907 by the architect and missionary James McDonald Gardiner (1857–1925). It is a site of considerable elite hobnobbing over the years and is now a rarified hotel and place for afternoon tea (¥5000) and as well as a French restaurant, Le Chene, with lunch menus from ¥9,900 to ¥35,200.

(Well, look, I can’t keep this up. I mean, if I continue to write about my visit to the Tobacco and Salt Museum at this rate, I’ll be still be writing about it in a week. That’s the challenge for me with web-based writing. Because I can include links and images, the writing itself gets caught up in a blur of searches and supporting documents. Let’s try to get back to the word rather than its reference.)

So what of the rest? Well, there are plenty of cigarette packets and related promotional materials to look at, whether static or moving. This 20th/21st century section is mostly devoted to the look of things. Other cigarette museums might be heavier on the machinery process and lighter on the visual design. What the museum certainly lacks is an extensive section on smoking and health. If you were opening a tobacco museum elsewhere I can imagine that you’d be legally obliged to pass through an immersive warning section. A Fantastic Journey into the lungs and heart of a smoker. I did not notice anything like this in the slightest. That lack did not bother me at all.

I paused for a Peace in their smoking booth. As you might anticipate from JTI, it was a paragon of cleanliness and state of the art ventilation. Then I headed downstairs to the gift shop. I bought a couple of large format books they’d produced on packet design and advertising, a few other monographs as well as a Golden Bat handkerchief. The museum also sells a modest range of smoking goods and salt. I chose a packet of Sobranie Cocktails, the multicoloured brand acquired by JTI when they bought the Gallaher Group in 2007. As both Cocktails and Black Russians are so distinct in their look, they are no longer sold in regions where generic plain design has been introduced. That restriction extends to the cigarettes themselves. No more logos or other distinguishing hallmarks and colours are permitted. A single font is employed across all brands. A distinct loss for GITANES. No more italic slope for them.

Anyway, the Tobacco and Salt Museum gets a very strong recommendation from me, as smoker and/or social historian, and it is a place that I will certainly visit again. It’s only ¥100 for entry, which is frankly almost symbolic at that price. And the salt section isn’t bad either! It’s a modest walk from Oshiage station and Skytree. No eating options on site. There is a Jonathan’s just around the corner if you’re after a robot-server family restaurant experience. As it happened, we were. My professor confessed to a fondness for their reasonably priced parfait.

SMOKING TIP TEN: It’s time to talk about vaping. You probably won’t see many people doing it in Japan. The law defines e-liquid containing nicotine, and related products, as medicinal and therefore they need to pass an exhaustive regulatory process. They haven’t as yet and cannot be sold. That restriction does not seem to extend to disposable CBD vapes which I saw on sale at numerous locations. Hmmm… Some might suggest the heavy hand of the tobacco industry here, as their heat-not-burn (HNB) alternatives such as Ploom, IQOS and others most certainly are approved, on sale and in very widespread use. You can buy juice in Japan, it just won’t contain any nicotine. As a visitor you are allowed to bring 120ml of nicotine containing e-juice for the purpose of your stay. As ever, there are ways and means, but don’t be surprised if your blowing fruity vape clouds in the smoking zone elicits great intrigue as to what you’re up to. And don’t think that Japan customs are not up on THC juice as well as other psychoactive cannabinoid variants. They most certainly are. Don’t be an ass.

Monday. A rain front had engulfed Tokyo in the early morning. I practice the Russian art of sitting on a suitcase or сидеть на чемоданах. This is a necessary pause before undertaking a long journey. Get ready to leave and then just sit quietly for a while and calm yourself. The suitcase is not essential. I had sent mine on ahead and just had a shoulder bag of essentials. I made do with the bed for sitting. Okay, now I can leave. A taxi journey to Tokyo station. The Toyota Crowns of yesteryear seem to have been almost entirely replaced by new hybrid JPNs with (gasp) options for card and contactless payment.

At 6:30am the station is not especially humming. Yes, there are numerous passengers, but the full range of refreshments, gift shops and bento vendors doesn’t open until 8am. There wasn’t much to do before departure except smoke a cigarette and buy an overpriced katsu sando of assured provenance. For a change, and certainly an indulgence, I’d bought a Shinkansen ticket to Hakata (Fukuoka) sitting in the Green Car, the equivalent to first class: more spacious seating, less of it and trolley service for drinks and snacks. Five hours of very little disturbance. Just the view from the window, gazing at sound barriers and strip malls, forest and hill, housing developments and factory plants, places known and unknown, stories and lives I hadn’t lived and now never will. Beautiful Japan…

SMOKING TIP ELEVEN: Train and Stations. Beyond the Shinkansen ticket barriers, you’ll find some smoking rooms up on the platforms themselves. At Tokyo station these are not provided on every platform. The smoking zones on open air platforms used to be found at either end, but I didn’t do any train travel during my stay beyond this one journey so I couldn’t establish how this might vary across the various regions on other lines. I saw a few as the train zoomed through smaller regional stops. As for smoking on the train, that has gone entirely. I didn’t much like the smoking carriages, but the small enclosed booths dotted along the train between seating areas seemed an excellent solution to me. Not so for Japan Rail. All gone, effective March 16, this year.

Part Two of this diary will appear in a week’s time and will cover smoking in Fukuoka, Ishigaki and Osaka.