Manchuria: a “utopia” created by opium Asahi Shimbun Digital x “Manshu Ahen Squad (Manchuria Opium Squad)”

The puppet state was controlled by Japanese military officers and bureaucrats. While Puyi（溥儀）, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, was used to heighten authority, he remained under the control of the Kwantung Army.

The Japanese deputies were in control of Manchukuo government organs and the emerging Japanese bureaucrats promoted heavy chemical industrialization.

Japanese reeling from the effects of the depression of the early Showa Era moved to Manchuria which they considered a new frontier. In addition to the second and third sons of farmers, Japanese simply trying to make a living crossed the ocean to develop farming villages.

Many companies, centered on those established by the new business conglomerates, also set up operating bases in Manchuria and eventually 1.55 million Japanese were living there. They never imagined that with Japan’s defeat in World War II, they would be destined to flee back to Japan with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

The five races of the slogan were often considered to be the Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Manchu and Mongolian. But in many cases, the Chinese and Manchu were bunched together as one and white Russians who escaped from the socialist Soviet Union were included as the fifth race.

On the surface, diverse cultures flowered in Manchuria as demonstrated by multiethnic neighborhoods, traditional ethnic customs and modern culture.

The capital of Xinjing was based on a modern urban design. Harbin’s entertainment district reflected the strong influence of Russian culture. The special express “Ajia（あじあ）” was faster than any train operating in Japan.

While affluent Japanese enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle in urban Manchuria, poverty pervaded the back alleys of major cities. And one of the main pillars of national finances was profits from the sale of opium.

Retailers who obtained approval from the authorities operated businesses in the middle of the city where people could openly smoke opium. Called “Yanguan” （煙館; opium divan）, young people frequented the establishments.

While wholesale companies designated for each region were supposed to be operated by Chinese, in most cases the actual owners were the Japanese who lurked in the background.

The juice extracted from young poppy fruit is dried and becomes raw opium. Raw opium processed for smoking and blended with flavoring becomes opium “Enko” (opium paste). Smoking opium relieves pain and worries and the user feels intoxicated and sexual pleasure. But the effect decreases with frequent use, so the amount used has to be increased. When the pleasant sensation wears off, the user feels strong concerns and lethargy and to overcome that pain means a life of continually using opium.

Extracting the narcotic element from raw opium creates morphine, which is used as a pharmaceutical. While it is a strategic material that is needed to treat injured soldiers in the warfront, it also creates a high degree of dependence. The more addictive narcotic heroin can be created from morphine.

Opium became a problem in China from early in the 19th century. It emerged through “triangular trade” orchestrated by Britain which exported opium from its colony of India to China to pay for the tea and silk it imported from there.

The Qing Dynasty tried to restrict opium, but it lost the Opium War (1839-42) to Britain and turned over control of Hong Kong to Britain. The Qing Dynasty was also forced to open up the port at Shanghai.

That led other Western powers, such as Russia and Germany, to also move into China. An international treaty agreed to in 1912 banned opium trade. But one nation continued to sell opium in its Asian colonies and puppet state. That was Japan.

“Zenkinshugi” policy was a system of the government selling opium only to registered regular users, while banning smoking for first-timers in an attempt to gradually eradicate opium which had spread throughout the nation.

It was not the Kwantung Army, but the state monopoly organ of the Manchukuo government which decided the cultivation areas, allowed farmers to grow poppy and buyers to collect it.

The biggest business rival to the state monopoly was bootleggers.

Japanese who moved to Manchuria dreaming of riches but ended up in dire straits hired local people to buy up opium from poppy farmers before the buyers from the state monopoly arrived and sold the product on the black market.

Because the Japanese were covered by extraterritoriality, the local police could not lay their hands on them.

From the Taisho to early Showa eras, Japan was one of the major opium producing nations in the world. Osaka and Wakayama were the major cultivation areas. In early May, which was harvest season, the white poppy flowers turned the plains into a snowfield.

Varieties with high harvest yield were created and cultivation technology was transmitted to Manchuria and China.

Most of those involved at the lowest levels in the bootlegging of opium and morphine in mainland China were Japanese.

Many of the bootleggers hired Koreans to sell the drugs while displaying the “Hinomaru” flag indicating extraterritoriality. Local residents were offended by such moves.

Incidents involving the desecration of the flag occurred and investigations showed it was the result of Chinese who mistakenly thought the Hinomaru was a trademark for opium.

A high-ranking officer of the Kwantung Army wrote about that in a volume published after the end of World War II.

The Huazhong Hongjishantang（華中宏濟善堂） was in charge of opium sales in Shanghai. The organization was managed by Hajime Satomi, a Japanese fluent in Chinese.

He was in charge of propaganda for the Kwantung Army during the Manchurian Incident and the following year established the Manchukuo news agency. He later published a Chinese-language newspaper in Tianjin, but became involved in distribution of opium after being asked to do so by those in charge of conspiracy plots at staff headquarters.

He would later be called the “opium king of Shanghai.”

As the war situation worsened, opium addicts in Manchukuo were forced to work in coal mines.

When the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria, the Kwantung Army tried to move out the stored opium, but gave up on the plan. While some was said to have been buried, no one knows what happened to the opium.

With defeat in war, the “opium nation” collapsed.