"White Merchandise" 2

     Throughout the 18th and most of the 19th Century, the British East India Company was the biggest drug cartel in the world.  When you consider that the British Empire had the largest GNP of all countries in the world, and 25% of its GNP was derived from opium trade, you can see how important the opium trade was to the empire.  Other nations also traded in opium, hashish, and cocaine, but not to the extent of the British Empire.  Ironically, the drugs were not illegal anywhere, not in Asia, not in Europe nor in America at this time!
     By the end of the 19th Century Britain lost its monopoly on opium trade.  Opium was grown in China and Manchuria, and local suppliers could provide drugs faster, and cheaper.  China, the country that twice went to war in order to prevent opium from entering its borders, now grew its own supply!  But once the new 20th Century began, another country stepped-in to take over where Britain left off in Asian opium trade, Japan!
     Japan developed a policy of growing and supplying opium to Chinese and other "inferior races" as they called them, in order to subjugate them.  Japan didn't get involved in opium trade early in the century when it first gained foothold in Manchuria after the Russo-Japanese War.  However, they soon saw the economic advantage of controlling the opium trade and by the 1930s was deeply involved.  A major cigarette manufacturer in Japan produced a brand of cigarettes that were called "Golden Bat."  The "Golden Bat" cigarettes were spiked with opium and were illegal for sale in Japan, they were for overseas sales only.  The idea was obviously to "hook" Chinese into opium usage! 
     By the 1930s, the head of Japanese Army Intelligence in Manchuria, General Kenji Doihara, became the biggest drug lord in China and Manchuria!  Doihara, along with several other Japanese generals and government officials as well as businessmen, formed an organization that was called Nikisansuke.  They controlled and managed not just the opium trade but prostitution and other criminal activities as well. The Nikisansuke was an extremely powerful organization that even government heads in Tokyo had to mind.  Japanese used its army, the elite Kwantung Army, to control the opium trade.  As it was pointed out in The Manchurian Tales, competition was not tolerated and dealt with ruthlessly.
     Japanese had acres and acres of land in Manchuria where they grew opium, which was harvested, refined, then shipped out for distribution, mainly in China.  As far fetched as it may sound, the idea was to turn China into a nation of drug addicts which the Japanese could control at will.  Along with sexual slavery of women, the so-called "comfort women,"and the biological and chemical weapon experimentation on Chinese subjects, the Japanese involvement in opium trade in Manchuria was one of those unimaginably cruel and inhumane practices that many in Japan to this day refuse to believe took place despite ample proof.
     Most of the members of the infamous Nikisansuke were captured and tried as War Criminals in 1946. General Doihara, along with his cronies were all executed.  Doihara in particular was singled out as being the head of the Japanese opium trade!  So, although the Japanese took over the opium trade in China and Manchuria from the British, their dominance in the drug trade was somewhat short lived, less than a half a century.