The Japanese Morphine Industry, 1880s to 1940s

Abstract Historians have explored Japanese drug manufacture and trafficking in Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. They have pointed out that in the same decades a domestically oriented morphine industry developed as result of Japanese efforts to achieve self-sufficiency. However, little attention has been paid to the development and impact of this industry. This article argues that the Japanese morphine industry had a significant impact on Japanese agriculture, promoted the rationalization of production processes in factories, and stood for a modern medical consumer culture. It was not until the 1930s and 1940s that poppy cultivation and morphine manufacture increasingly relied on resources and labour from the colonies. This also reflected a shift to a war economy. Drugs were then mainly produced for the military and found their way onto black markets in Japan and Northeast Asia.