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"In tackling the important and controversial issue of drugs in Japan, Miriam Kingsberg manages to avoid all the pitfalls and shows the extraordinary complexity of the legal, economic, social and political vectors which led to the Kwantung Leased Territory under the Japanese becoming a major center for the production and consumption of narcotics. A lucid, elegantly written, pathbreaking book." --Frank Dikötter, author of Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China
"Moral Nation contributes significantly to an understanding of how narcotics trafficking and narcotics policies shaped Japanese imperialism and Japanese national identity from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century." --David Ambaras, author of Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan
List of contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Moral Nation
1. Moral Crusade in Meiji Japan
2. Drug Users in the Epicenter of Consumption
3. Cultural Producers and the Japanese Empire
4. Cultural Producers and Manchukuo
5. Merchants
6. Law Enforcement
7. Laboratory Scientists
8. Medical Doctors
9. Moral Panic in Postwar Japan
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the author
Miriam Kingsberg is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Summary
This trailblazing study examines the history of narcotics in Japan to explain the development of global criteria for political legitimacy in nations and empires in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Japan underwent three distinct crises of sovereignty in its modern history: in the 1890s, during the interwar period, and in the 1950s. Each crisis provoked successively escalating crusades against opium and other drugs, in which moral entrepreneurs--bureaucrats, cultural producers, merchants, law enforcement, scientists, and doctors, among others--focused on drug use as a means of distinguishing between populations fit and unfit for self-rule. Moral Nation traces the instrumental role of ideologies about narcotics in the country's efforts to reestablish its legitimacy as a nation and empire.
As Kingsberg demonstrates, Japan's growing status as an Asian power and a "moral nation" expanded the notion of "civilization" from an exclusively Western value to a universal one. Scholars and students of Japanese history, Asian studies, world history, and global studies will gain an in-depth understanding of how Japan's experience with narcotics influenced global standards for sovereignty and shifted the aim of nation building, making it no longer a strictly political activity but also a moral obligation to society.
Additional text
"Moral Nation, meticulously researched and sensibly written, is a welcome addition to the library of Japanese studies."
