Judith Vitale et al., "Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan" (Brill, 2023)
Jun 22 2024
73 mins
In early modern Japan, upper status groups coveted pills and powders made of exotic foreign ingredients such as mummy and rhinoceros horn. By the early twentieth century, over-the-counter-patent medicines, and, more alarmingly, morphine, had become mass commodities, fueling debates over opiates in Japan's expanding imperial territories. The fall of the empire and the occupation of