Japan 2024: A Smoking Diary (2/3)
マッチ擦るつかのま海に霧ふかし身捨つるほどの祖国はありや (POET)/striking a match momentarily I see the foggy ocean is there a motherland I can dedicate myself to (MAN)/there is a country that is so foggy that you throw yourself away in the sea (MACHINE)
Terayama Shūji/寺山修司, 1956.
FUK-ISG
When did I first visit Fukuoka? It must be around fifteen years ago. I was on a tourist visa and had bought two Japan Rail passes. One I used for a week’s travel north to Aomori to various locations connected to the life and work of the poet and playwright Terayama Shūji. The other for a journey around Kyūshū, with stops in Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Kagoshima, Miyazaki, Ōita and elsewhere.
Not far from the centre of Miyazaki is the strangest extant building of Japan’s Imperial era, the Hakkō Ichiu Tower/八紘一宇の塔, a construction of such occult malevolence that its richly decorated interior has to remain locked to prevent seepage of the horror it may yet evoke again. File alongside the Mimizuka/耳塚 in Kyoto, a monument built from sixty thousand Korean and Chinese noses taken as trophies during Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasions of Korea, 1592 to 1598. It was renamed the Peace Tower in a Peace Park/平和台公園, but even the addition of chirpy, benevolent haniwa figures around the boundary can’t stop the building from humming its anthems in your ears.
I liked Fukuoka/福岡 and still do. It’s reasonably compact and yet spacious. It also conforms to the advice of a Japanese linguistics professor of many years ago. People in the north tend to open their mouths less. Too much cold air gets in. They can expand more in the south. So they’re more Mediterranean. Hmm, okay, we nodded.
I’ve tried mapping various Kyūshū locations onto their potential European cousins. There’s a certain level of sleaze to Fukuoka around the Nakasu/中洲 district and the region as a whole has some significant criminal history as well as being on the sea, but does that make it (a cliché of) Marseille? Bah, non. Its proximity to the Korean peninsula means that it has been a point of arrival and departure from mythical Yamato times to the present day. The hydrofoil to Busan in Korea takes just under four hours. If you want older Japan, whatever that is, the former administrative centre of Dazaifu/太宰府 is 15 minutes on the train and is also the location of the excellent Kyushu National Museum. There are numerous beaches and pocket islands in easy reach as well.
Kyūshū also has significant culinary strengths. It’s the pork-boned tonkotsu/豚骨 ramen that has travelled most successfully to the UK and elsewhere. The raw horse slivers of basashi/馬刺し and intestinal motsu nabe/もつ鍋 hotpot not so much. The Jesuit mission under Francis Xavier made land at Kagoshima in 1549 and that culinary impact of new ingredients and techniques is part described as Nanban Ryōri/南蛮料理, the food of the Southern Barbarians. The shippoku/卓袱 style of Nagasaki, the site of the Dutch trading post of Deshima, is the only extant example of a pie in “traditional” Japanese cuisine of which I’m aware. Nanban also gave its name to the popular dish Chicken Nanban/チキン南蛮, a deep fried fillet dipped into sweet and sour sauce (via escabeche as much as anything Chinese) and served with a rich, eggy tartare sauce as accompaniment (almost a gribiche). The pickling method of nanbanzuke/南蛮漬け is a similar memory of escabeche.
Further south in Kagoshima, centre of Satsuma clan power and the long-standing thorn in Edo/Tokyo dominion, you can find Kurobuta/黒豚 black (skin) pork, a crossbreed from Okinawan and Berkshire stock, as well as a few restaurants doing Amami cuisine such as keihan/鶏飯, one of my favourite dishes anywhere. A simple arrangement of shredded chicken, omelette, mushroom, papaya, seaweed, etc, over rice with a chicken broth poured over.
These hotter climes suit lighter dishes such as these. The islands of Amami Ōshima/奄美大島 to the south of Kyūshū produce a wonderful shochu spirit from brown sugar and rice. Kyūshū is all about the sweet potato when it comes to indigenous hard booze. And let’s not forget Shirokuma/白くま, a shaved ice dessert with condensed milk and fruit, that looks just a little like its nominal polar bear.
Can we please get back to smoking? This is reading like guidebook copy. Machines can generate this sort of writing effortlessly and you’ve wasted two hours. Yes, but they’re inventing things, repeating lies and making claims they can’t back up when you corner them. Oh, yes, sorry, I have now realised that my answer is largely bullshit. Thanks.
Amami Ōshima is both the start of Okinawa and the end of Japan, and it’s administrated from Kagoshima rather than Naha. I was in Fukuoka for just two nights and then I’d travel south to Ishigaki at the furthest south and west of present day Okinawa prefecture. Island history and politics of this region are complex and I’m going to have to deal with them at some point. Later. Let’s get back to the fags.
I was too early for check in at the hotel, so I dumped the bag and headed off for a wander. There was a modest tobacconist along from the hotel entrance and four or five people stood grouped around the ashtray provided. I joined in. Aha. I hadn’t seen this behaviour in Tokyo. This was how it was in Osaka when I last lived there. Smoking on the street, particularly when walking, was becoming frowned upon. But the local convention was that the presence of an ashtray outside a convenience store, tobacconist, booze shop or such created a de facto smoking area.
There was an official smoking zone opposite the hotel in Kego Park/警固公園, something of a European piazza in some ways, an open area for hanging out, loosely enclosed by a shrine, Mitsukoshi department store, Bic Camera and innumerable other shopping opportunities.
Local guide song song writes on Google Maps:
This place is full of smokers. It’s also known locally as the smokers’ park. If you want your kids to have an early start in smoking, this is a good place to start as the smokers will surround the kids playground to inculcate the habit of smoking. (one star)
수다쟁이Max writes:
it's sad to come here at lunch time. many young Japanese just sit here and have a lunch with some peace of bread or lunchbox from convenience store most of them looks lonely (three stars)
Kyle Trusler:
The open area was nice, but the park itself didn't have much in the way of anything special! There was also a drunk lady that approached and started talking to me which was uncomfortable. (three stars)
I strolled around Tenjin and Daimyo for an hour or so and then returned to check in. It was again a smoking room, but significantly lacking in odour. The floor to ceiling window looked down upon the streets and houses. A nice view. Much better than the arse end from the Mystays’ second floor in Tokyo. I fell into a deep satisfying sleep, a sort that I had not experienced since my arrival in Japan. I was glad to be back in Fukuoka.
Three hours later I just about managed to rouse myself for the evening. I was meeting up with a friend and his wife. He’d had some terrible news in recent months with the discovery of a highly advanced cancer, but on that night I visited he’d just had the best news in ages. The course of immunotherapy had been a success and the most significant tumours had all but vanished.
There was an Italian restaurant we’d visited together a while back, KASA, that I’d discovered via American chef Harris Salat who’d been working in Kyūshū for a while. I was doing some culinary training myself in Osaka at the time. He’d mentioned the place on his site and it was only a short walk from the hotel. KASA was not a revelation. That sounds like a criticism, but it really isn’t. It was a model of tight, cooperative working between husband and wife, Yosuke and Mami Kanamaru, who are the only staff on hand. They both prep and cook, but once open, she concentrates on the service, drinks and front of house. He beavers away in the modest open kitchen with a seated counter around it.
This counter-based dining style is something that has been taken up with some success outside Japan. Joel Robuchon was the first significant European borrower of the idea with his L’Atelier concept which launched in 2003. This and the related open kitchen concept in restaurants are not exclusively Japanese in origin, but it is the case that their growth dates to when European and other chefs began to visit Japan in significant numbers and were impressed not just by the food, but also by restaurant design, kitchen process and other practices and features.
Two weekends ago I sat at the counter with my family at the recently opened Blue Pelican in Deal. It’s about a thirty minute drive along the coast from my home in Folkestone. It’s had some very encouraging reviews and a few people suggested I should try it as they were doing a Japanese thing and there’s not so much of that here on the Kent coast.
Chef Luke Green had put in some years working at his wife’s family kaiseki restaurant in Japan and then later worked under Nuno Mendes and at Quo Vadis. So, an Englishman doing a spin on Japanese and a Japanese doing a spin on Italian? How do those compare? And aren’t you supposed to be writing about smoking and not food again? Let’s see if a list speeds things up:
A generous lunch of small plates and such for four at The Blue Pelican came to £238.50 including service. Four beers, one cocktail and a glass of wine. Let’s call that ¥47,000. I don’t think I spent that much in my first week of eating in Japan, including the lunch for two at the Michelin starred French place in Kagurazaka, Lugdunum Bouchon Lyonnais. Britain is expensive. PARTICULARLY THE FAGS! I’d eat ample, generous lunch specials for ¥1200 or less. Five or six quid. Love a duck…
That expense also translates to ingredients. For a seaside town like Deal, I’d have expected more seafood on the menu, but that’s not only highly expensive, it also has a very brief peak of freshness. If customers don’t eat it, it’s done. We’re not at all adventurous with our fish and crustacea here. Better to go more meat. We will eat that. Whereas in Kyūshū, there is incredible seafood at far more reasonable prices and the clientele may well want that in preference to meat and they won’t wrinkle their noses at head-to-tail eating either for minimum waste. So, no, the Blue Pelican don’t do sushi. Probably because like any chef who has been to Japan, you soon realise you should leave that to the surgical experts.
There were some great dishes and a couple I was a bit unsure about. For example, White asparagus, bottarga, miso was a close call for my favourite, but what to do with all this lovely liquid on the plate with no bread to soak it up with? The chicken tsukune appeared to be a piece of actual fillet rather than ground meat. It was good but not what I was hoping for. The soromame (fava/broad bean) tofu and peas divided the crowd. My son is adamant he hates tofu. I tell him he’s never eaten decent tofu in the UK. The peas were only barely cooked, if at all, whereas the tofu was exceptionally soft and dissolved quickly into the broth. As an expression of textures, flavours and freshness, I was happy with it, but this tofu was not to be his road to Damascus. Just you wait, son.
My favourite dish was the kumquat and kinako set custard. Something Grace Dent passed over in her review. Her loss. William Sitwell had suggested in his for The Telegraph that the reblochon and Bayonne ham croquettes were “a diversion, miles from Japan”, quite overlooking the extensive provenance of the Japanese croquette from the Meiji era onwards. Ditto this custard, or what would be better described as purin/プリン, again an absolute mainstay of Japanese cuisine. This example had a gorgeous bitter note and that can be tricky to balance. A couple more desserts like this would be a great addition.
Whilst the family were all nodding about the food afterwards, I wasn’t so sure about the ambience. No, I don’t want to be assaulted by gyrating staff and Mizrahi rave music at the counter like at Machneyuda in Jerusalem - it made sense there - and neither do I want a return to those austere Japanese UK restaurants of years past with koto and shamisen BGM where you felt your every move was probably an insult to somebody somewhere, whether living or dead. The kitchen/counter is assuredly a stage. It’s theatre. You have to make a directorial decision as to what form your interaction with the customers is going to take. I’d have liked a little more welcome. But I entirely recognise this is just one more level of complication atop the cooking and plating process. Maybe Brits don’t want a chat? I certainly sit at the counter in Japan anticipating some form of interaction. Tell me more about this ingredient, what’s your approach, create a relationship, one that has me wanting to come back. A few days after our visit, they posted they were taking a week’s break until the 12th. Aha! They were understandably exhausted by the set-up, launch and opening run. ご苦労様… Rest well.
IS THERE A SMOKING AREA? Of course not. This is the UK. You could stand on the narrow pavement outside and get in people’s way or cross the road for a better view of the Channel. So long as they don’t think you’re going to break into a swim across to France to avoid paying the bill.
Y retournerai-je? And will I return there? As French food writer François Simon asks at the end of his Instagram reviews. Definitely, although maybe I can split the bill with someone next time! I don’t criticise overall price at the moment in the UK as if you're being extorted by the restaurants themselves. They are at the end of innumerable bits of gouging by suppliers, importers, landlords and such. Everyone is trying to survive, some more so than others. This needs mentioning as a place like this requires a foundation of Japanese ingredients, many of which are not yet produced here to a sufficient quality and UK-based Japan suppliers do like their substantial mark up. Here in Folkestone, I’ve got Mark Sargeant cooking his heart out at Restaurant MS and offering a five course prix fixe at just £35 and he really does know his Anglo-French onions. EDIT: The à la carte is now £55 and an express three course at £25. Deal is more moneyed than here overall, but some sort of bento or teishoku offering might make the overall cost more attractive and less prone to spread if you’re hovering. That may well be the case during the week. I visited on a Saturday. SMOKING NOTE! Mark even has a couple of tables out the front where you could light up over a coffee and digestif. He has some outstanding Kentish eau-de-vie.
KASA was closed for regular service on the evening I was in town. They were hosting the Italian wine grower Vietti from Piedmont for a wine tasting event. But that’s not a problem, they replied in a message, why don’t you come along to that instead? So the three of us headed over. KASA had moved since my last visit and was now fortuitously close to my friends’ apartment. Before they’d been in a place called Konya/紺屋2023, a mixed use conversion in Daimyo with galleries, studios and performance space. The sort of location that generally pisses me off in the UK and elsewhere, but in Japan I enjoy. But why? An excellent question, but not one I’ve got a ready answer for. Possibly because I don’t find Japan to have nearly so many arseholes in it or if there are, they are at least gifted with rather different qualities. That’s maybe part of the answer.
Their new location was in Kiyokawa/清川. A kominka/古民家 just off the main drag on the 602 down from the centre of town. An old wooden house that immediately put me at ease with its invitation into a personal, secluded setting. I could talk about the wines on offer or the snacks they served up, either from the kitchen or a bbq they’d set up in the garden. I won’t. Did I smoke a cigarette inside? Of course not, but I did nip out the front and smoke one there on the street.
SMOKING TIP TWELVE: One of your best friends for smoking in Japan, beyond a reliable lighter, is the portable ashtray. I didn’t know what the precise city ordinance might be in Fukuoka for smoking on the street in a neighbourhood outside the centre. I’d had a few wines. So long as I deported myself properly, I didn’t think it would be a problem. To do this, you need a portable ashtray. You’re not tapping your ash on the ground and neither are you grinding the butt into the pavement or flicking it over a wall. There’s no excuse not to having an ashtray on your person. They are sold at all convenience stores alongside the lighters. These are generally the disposable kind. Finished your fag? Tuck it into the pocket, snap the cover shut and squeeze to extinguish. Non-disposable models can also be found. With a portable ashtray, anywhere can become a Temporary Alighting Zone. You might be in the wrong, but you are at least demonstrating an attempt to do right. If challenged, if you really need anyone to explain this, apologise, extinguish using the portable ashtray, apologise again. Backchat, particularly the sarcastic British variety, does not work in Japan.
Let me explain that “not a revelation” comment above. The food I’ve eaten at KASA has been fantastic. It is the French tradition via Escoffier that has had the strongest European influence on Japanese food culture, but I think that Italian maps far more readily onto Japanese cuisine and not because of the obvious noodle/pasta continuum. Italian generally eschews complication. The perfect dish is the simplest combination of three or maybe four elements. Let those ingredients speak for themselves. There are plenty of complications in Japanese food with preparation and presentation, but they’re generally not the actual combination of flavours. KASA is an Italian restaurant that uses the best of local ingredients. Is it the precise same variety of seafood or vegetables you’d find in Genoa, Naples or Palermo? Of course not. Sotto voce (again): it’s often better. These independent, chef-led Italian restaurants in Japan, such as KASA, will provide some of your finest food memories in Japan. Don’t pass them by.
(If the above reads like advertorial for friends, you’re probably right! KASA are at: 3 Chome-17-13 Kiyokawa, Chuo Ward, Fukuoka, 810-0005. Tel: +81 92-983-6051. Evenings only. I’d advise contacting via their Instagram for a reservation prior to visiting. I wish them every luck in their new setting. They’re doing great food and wine and their welcome and friendliness are exceptional too.)
I didn’t do much the following day. As jet lag was at last departing, actual exhaustion began to take its place. Fortunately everything I needed was in a block or two of the hotel. I stopped by a tobacconist called AUN Smoke, a Yokusuka shop that opened their Tenjin branch in Fukuoka last year. I guess that’s AUN for 阿吽/Om/ॐ and therefore connected to a sense of air, breath and mouth as much as Alpha and Omega, cosmic creation and extinction and the old lungs going in and out.
It was a particularly good trove with a vast array of tobacco products. Quite a lot of the rolling tobacco sold in Japan is the flavoured variety, with various additives for fruity, minty, etc, experiences. I’m not a huge fan. They can be a refreshing change at first, but they tend to get rather one note after a while. I bought a couple of Indonesian brands I’d not seen before. The one I’ve been smoking since my return, a Papillon Halfzware, is a little tainted with flavourings (vanilla, coffee, liquorice) but it’s not overbearing. The complimentary rolling papers, Tsutsumi, an unbleached hemp for semi-slow burning, are for once excellent too.
They also had two brands of non-Japanese cigarettes I’d not seen before: Treasurer and Cigaronne. I’d heard of these and looked at dummy photos of the products on their sites but never the actual packets. I’d long suspected they didn’t really exist at all and were some sort of vapourware tax dodge for which I couldn’t quite work out the mechanics.
In the current trinity of tobacco smoking (cigars, pipes, cigarettes), fags are definitely in third place. Although they come in affordable, cheaper versions, cigars are a luxury product. They’re promoted with that same entitlement of provenance and terroir that you find in the wine world. Do you have too much money? Cigars are an excellent hobby. Not only can they be phenomenally expensive and rare, they also indicate your prowess and wealth. Whether you’re hip-hop, football or crypto new money, Pass the Courvoisier and such, or the gentry of old, being rich and a man - or pretending - means you smoke a cigar. It’s not for nothing that the imprisoned influencer brothers Andrew and Tristran Tate like to flash theirs stubs in innumerable publicity shots. Here we are…
Cigar shops are therefore generally found in the rarefied sections of town where luxury is commodified. In London, the modest cluster of C. Gars, Davidoff, and J.J. Fox are stretched along St. James’s, handy for the wallets of Mayfair, Fitzrovia and elsewhere. Alfred Dunhill left its Jermyn Street location some years ago for Davies St in Mayfair. Contemporary cigar shops very often sell spirits to accompany, such as whisky and rum, products that can also command high prices for limited editions and other forms of exclusivity. With their walk-in humidors and clubby interiors they are an experience for the disaffected and damned. The people in the photos look like twits. Individually they may at times be quite charming, en masse I would avoid. I don’t mean the staff.
Pipes are also an expensive hobby, but at a more competitive entry point. These smokers are enthusiasts. Cigar smokers are ready-to-wear, however high the prices, whereas pipe smokers tend towards bespoke. They’ll seek out rare or vanishing tobacco strains to blend into recreations of lost and legendary tins. They need to get under the hood at weekends to keep their pipes in order. They have dirty hands.
Cigars are branded. What do you do about that band? Do you take it off or leave on display? Are you the sort of idiot who loves and leaves that rectangle of fabric on your sleeve to tell everyone about it? Cigars are possibly for you. There is no branding on a pipe beyond a subtle maker’s mark on the stem or bowl. Just as the tailoring of Anderson and Sheppard is distinct from Huntsman and that from Edward Sexton and so on, you spot a pipe’s origins and realise the tobacco therein through an understanding of shape and aroma, you need extensive knowledge, not a logo. For me, this makes pipe smokers the superior of the two. Am I deliberately goading cigar smokers here? Absolutely.
What you rarely find in cigar shops now are cigarettes. Fags are popular and they are common as muck. The worker may once have been able to pop out on an ad hoc smoke break, but there was never enough time for a cigar. That extended period of leisure was the reserve of management and directors. Gaspers, sticks and coffin nails were brief, inhaled breaks and then you’re back to work, whether on the shop floor or in a wartime trench. They mark time, but they are the minute hand, not the hour. Know your place.
My evident hostility to cigars here, with playful intention, is that they come across like a Grand Cru mafia. Do you want to drink the finest wines? Well, here are the most established and expensive houses. Do they make fine wine? Yes, and with prices to match. Romanée-Conti? That’ll do, I suppose. Pipe smokers feel to me more like those wine enthusiasts who seek out rare, tricky grapes and sneak across domaine lines into dismissed regions and styles. Cigarettes, despite the numbers, just don’t have the cachet. We’re Vin de Table. The masses. La racaille.
There were once luxury cigarettes. Brands that you could sell alongside the cigars without bringing down the tone. Not far from St James’s and just by Savile Row, the tobacconist Sullivan Powell & Co. once occupied a premises at the northern end of Burlington Arcade. The shop’s sudden vanishing was an early sign of luxury cigarettes’ demise. Prince Margaret’s death in 2002 perhaps the latter.
I had visited two or three times at the very start of my smoking career: Special No. 1 Turkish (ovals), Orientals (ditto), “Private Stock”, Khedive Moyen and others. The upstairs of the premises had two women hand-rolling bespoke styles and blends for customers. Contrary to pre-internet schoolboy rumour, S&P were not the brand James Bond smoked by preference. He was a Morlands of Grosvenor St. man. On film these were often Senior Service. And in Japan, for You Only Live Twice, Shinsei:
‘Did we wish to conquer America? The supply lines were too long. But Australia and New Zealand were ripe for the plucking.' He pushed forward a large box of cigarettes. 'Do you smoke? These are Shinsei. It is an acceptable brand.'
James Bond was running out of his Morland specials. He would soon have to start on the local stuff. He also had to collect his thoughts. This was rather like being involved in a Summit meeting between the United Kingdom and Japan. He felt way out of his depth. He took a cigarette and lit it. It burned rapidly with something of the effect of a slow-burning firework. It had a vague taste of American blends, but it was good and sharp on the palate and lungs like 90 proof spirits. He let the smoke out in a quiet hiss and smiled. 'Mr Tanaka, these are matters for political historians. I am concerned with much lower matters. And matters concerning the future rather than the past.'
I can’t speak for the quality of Shinsei in 1964, but Tiger Tanaka is correct, they were an acceptable brand. I would however have offered Bond a short Peace, if not one of those Imperial numbers, which I feel is a little closer to his level of cigarette refinement.
Treasurer and Cigaronne - hello again - are two recent attempts to introduce a new luxury cigarette brand to the market. The trouble is that I have no idea who they are. Treasurers come from the Chancellor Tobacco Company with an Ipswich address that leads to a vacant looking area on Google Maps. Ipswich, like many British towns, has a tobacco history. Churchman’s (pdf) were founded here in 1790 and then sucked into Imperial Tobacco in 1902, now Imperial Brands plc. The last of the town’s tobacconists, MW Ashtons, closed its doors in 2023.
If I were launching a nominally Ipswich-based brand, I’d make some point about employing some of that two hundred and fifty years of tradition and expertise in their manufacture. The words Treasurer, Chancellor, not to mention the crowned portcullis, lion passant guardant and what is that, not really a portcullis at all, maybe the world or the Illuminati? Well, it’s certainly trying and that is possibly the worst sin of all for those of a certain class and background. However, I don’t think the target market are necessarily as attuned to feverish British obsessions over U and non-U in former or current editions. Like the meme of Russian influencer Alla Bruletova flicking and stroking her Bentley, it’s the mirage of quality, presented in 4K AMSR for hard-ons.
Cigaronne are not dissimilar. They have a Frenchy look with that cursive logo and are slimmer affairs in assorted livery. They are more coded as a woman’s cigarette. The pricier version come in a box, obviously, not a flip-top. What both brands share, other than that significantly higher price point, is that their actual provenance is Armenian and not so much Suffolk. Their bot has spoken:
In Japan, Cigaronne has become more than just a brand — it’s a cultural phenomenon. Walk the streets of Tokyo or Osaka and you’re bound to see groups of young people with their eyes glued to their phone screens using social media to track down our products.
This addiction started a few years ago. The search for Cigaronne has practically become a competitive sport for Japanese youth. They form groups and make finding the latest products into an adventurous social activity. Brand loyalists excitedly post their hauls on TikTok, further fueling the hype.
Cigaronne has achieved the ultimate marketing goal — a product people are obsessed with finding and owning. Their clever mix of exclusivity, social media hype, and must-have designs has made them the most sought-after name in Japanese society.
Oh, do fuck off/くたばれ, etc. For reference, Cigaronne’s Exclusive Browns are ¥1500 for twenty (£7.50) and Treasurer Black are ¥3000 (£15). Any delusion of luxury is somewhat dispelled by the knowledge £15 is almost the UK price for any brand of cigarette. Except you can’t buy these in the UK, because they’d have to give up the packaging, logos and design, and dress themselves in the generic mufti of drab olive green/brown Pantone 448 C, aka the ugliest colour in the world.
I needed more background. I sent a message to Control: What is the most expensive cigarette in the world?
As of my last knowledge update in September 2021, one of the most expensive cigarette brands in the world was the Treasurer's Cigarettes line. Treasurer's Cigarettes are known for their luxury and exclusivity, with prices ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars per pack. These cigarettes are made with high-quality tobacco and are often adorned with gold or diamond filters, contributing to their high price tag.
Control was clearly in their pay. I’d have to watch my step down south.
If I were in the position of having vast funds for cigarette purchases, other than establishing my own modest workshop for their manufacture, I’d smoke all manner of brands from around the world. Staff would fly to Japan, Germany, Mexico, Indonesia and so on to keep me in stock. I’d probably also buy up the remaining “live” packs of Nat Sherman dead stock, such as the outstanding Havana Ovals. This New York maker were a brand deserving of the luxury moniker. They were acquired by Altria, formerly Philip Morris, in 2017 and had vanished by 2020.
I headed back to the hotel for another snooze. It was quite an effort to make it out of bed to meet my friend at an English pub that evening. I pretty much avoided these places when I lived in Japan, but it was happy hour and gin and tonics were at giveaway prices. The rooftop balcony section permitted outdoor smoking. I looked across the Fukuoka skyline towards the mountains and sighed. For the first time in a week I could feel myself relaxing and for the first time I had the sense of a journey approaching its end.
I have lived in Japan. I don’t really want to again. Years ago I gave my location on Facebook as Ishigaki. For a while that lie meant that the adverts and promotions that now drown the user experience were all local island and Okinawa centred. But the algorithms and such caught up. I haven’t updated it.
HOTEL REVIEW: KOKO Hotel Fukuoka Tenjin, 1 Chome-22-14 Imaizumi, Chuo Ward. They state: “Our aim is to create a place where diverse ひと (hito - people), もの (mono - experiences), and とき (toki - moments) intersect. We aspire to offer moments of discovery and connection that bring small, positive changes to everyday life. By weaving together ひと (hito - people), もの (mono - experiences), and とき (toki - moments), we strive to help create a narrative that extends from the present into the future.” I practiced very little intersection here, but it was a pleasant stay and certainly a vast improvement on the Showa melancholy of the previous Mystays. All fixtures and fittings seemed very recent. I got close to having a real sleep. Excellent location in the centre and would happily use again or try out one of their other branches.
Ishigaki was the place I was most looking forward to. A return to these Yaeyama islands/八重山諸島 at the furthest reach of Okinawa prefecture and, by extension, Japan itself. It is a place I sometimes fantasise about retiring to, if I had the money, and Japan were more generous with its long stay visas. I’d been six, maybe seven, times before. I loved its sense of periphery and difference from Japan. In other words, much as I may have studied these islands, I’ll admit to a well-intentioned orientalising gaze. Let’s not pretend otherwise. I’d imagine the coming end of life, collapsing amidst mangrove or sugar cane field, swiftly consumed by land crab, snake and insect in the fetid, near tropical air. Vanished and repurposed. So be it. I still find that comforting.
Fukuoka airport is in easy reach of the city centre. Just ten minutes by taxi. It’s one of the numerous positive points about the place. I drank an iced coffee, checked in at the Peach counter and went for a smoke in one of the domestic terminal’s numerous permitted locations. Let’s have a look at where we’re going on a map. Let’s try Wikipedia.
Now, most maps of Japan, such as those used in tv weather forecasts, clip Okinawa from view in geographical context. It pops up in a side section. The complete archipelago of Japan/日本列島 has too much distance to it. That side section is often just the main Okinawa group to the north and none from Miyako and Yaeyama. That pink rectangle is my overlay for Yaeyama. Those islands just to the right of it are part of the Miyako group/宮古列島. Enhance…
Does that work? Well, it tells you the names of most of the islands and their relative positions, but let’s try and improve the context. Pull out, centre in, stop…
Where are we? Japan. But we’re very close to Taiwan. That island is 330km from Ishigaki, and Taipei from Yonaguni is just over 100km, depending on your sources. Ishigaki to Kagoshima is 1100km, whereas Luzon in the Philippines is 900km. Ishigaki to Naha, the capital of Okinawa prefecture, is 420km. And, well, you can hardly not notice the presence of China.
The Japanese Empire/大日本帝國 has its dates of 1868-1947. From the Meiji Restoration or Renovation/明治維新 to the formal settlement of hostilities and the new Constitution of Japan/日本国憲法. The Empire expands into regions such as Taiwan/Formosa, Korea, Manchuria and so on. Areas that it gains via warfare and diplomacy. It returns these regions at the end of this period or has them taken.
Such is not the case for Okinawa. The acquisition of these islands was an earlier gain made by the Satsuma Domain/薩摩藩 based in Kagoshima. Satsuma’s dominion was transferred to Meiji authority. The Ryūkyū Kingdom/琉球國 of 1429 became a Satsuma vassal in 1609. In 1869, its monarchy was dissolved into Meiji nobility and its lands made into the Okinawa Prefecture/沖縄県 of today.
Prior to Satsuma and Japan, it was China that had the greater influence, with the Ryūkyū Kingdom a tributary state of the Ming Dynasty from its outset. That trading connection to China was one that Satsuma was able to exploit for significant profit.
Following the end of Pacific War, Okinawa was not returned to Japan. It was occupied and remained under American control until 1972 when it was returned to Japanese administration. The idea that it might become independent once more was not one entertained by either authority.
It’s sort of a tropical Shetland, I wrote to a friend, somewhere at the edge of things, but with trees. Is it Britain? Is it Scotland even? For although Ishigaki was part of Okinawa, that inclusion reflected an earlier series of wars in which the newly established Ryūkyū Kingdom had itself done an imperialism on these southern islands. The 1500 uprising of Oyake Akahachi/遠弥計赤蜂の乱 (pdf) was the failed, local resistance of Yaeyama against the islands’ new Ryūkyū overlords and their agents.
But even these names of islands, warriors and such are Japanese, as opposed to Okinawan or Yaeyaman. Japan defines the languages of Okinawa as dialect, what is termed hōgen/方言 or ben/弁. This grouping within Japanese as sole national language/国語, as opposed to alongside it, mirrors the geopolitics. Similarly to Cornish, Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Irish and so on in the British Isles, the use of island languages has been largely suppressed. On Ishigaki you will barely encounter them at all, beyond a few welcome signs and confusing transliteration of island names: Iriomote is Irimuti, Hateruma is Patirooma, Taketomi is Teedun and so on.
The 1989 film Untamagiru/ウンタマギルー by the Ishigaki born director Takamine Gō 高嶺剛 is one of very few Okinawan language productions. It weaves a fantastic narrative around themes of occupation and independence and that use of mainland Okinawan language means it required Japanese subtitles. Also starring J-pop anti-idol pop sensation Togawa Jun/戸川純, John Sayles, as well as the Okinawan singer and comedian Teruya Rinsuke/照屋林助 who acts as a form of musical chorus to the action. Bookmark this and watch at another time. I don’t know of a version with English subs.
Even the folk songs you’ll hear in the evening at various bars and restaurants, such as the famous Asadoya Yunta/安里屋ゆんた, well, that will as often come in its Japanese language versions. The first here is in the local language, the second in Japanese. Both are excellent!
Unlike the British Isles, attempts to restore these languages informally or in law have not been so successful. There’s no obligation for their use in documents or public signage. Their teaching at school is limited. There’s no local newspaper on Ishigaki that uses them. Everyone speaks Japanese, for some a Japanese tinged with island sound and expression, but it’s assuredly Japanese.
It’s tricky to gauge how much this loss is felt by people on the islands. No one is expecting me, a tourist, to be able to speak these languages and neither do they expect anyone else to either. Beyond song and festival, they have nearly vanished from the outsider’s gaze. To what extent they may be used privately is something I cannot know.
That song, Asadoya Yunta, is one of the best known of the broader Okinawan folk canon and it has been covered in innumerable variations, such as those by the late Sakamoto Ryūichi/坂本龍一 who alongside his Yellow Magic Orchestra/YMO bandmates Hosono Haruomi/細野晴臣 and the also sadly deceased Takahashi Yukihiro/高橋幸宏 - the best dressed man in Japan! - were all greatly influenced by Okinawan folk music which enjoyed a boom period of interest and influence in Japan from the mid-70s. Koza-born Okinawa mainlander Kina Shōkichi/喜納昌吉 and the infectious jaunt of Haisai Ojisan (Oi! Oi! Grandad!) probably being the most celebrated. Kina was doing a Fairport Convention folk-rock/Chas & Dave Rockney to Okinawan folk. Here’s his original from 1972, recorded when he was still in high school.
And here it is in 1977 for the first Champloose/チャンプルーズ album.
But, again and again, this is all fine, but it’s not really much to do with smoking, is it? No. Look, let me sum up. I’m off on a few days of hiking in the British countryside tomorrow (rain, more rain) and I really should be getting on with my packing.
Ishigaki is Yaeyama is Okinawa is Japan. Yonaguni island/与那国島 is part of Yaeyama formally, but they call the island Dunan whereas it’s Yunoon on Ishigaki. It’s definitely out on its own. Where do you draw the lines? Do you need them? How does Yaeyama connect to Okinawa? I remember sitting in an Ishigaki bar with a drunk Japanese bureaucrat from Naha. He’d been stuck on Iriomote, trying to get farmers onboard with some novel agricultural practices. He railed against their stubborn, bumpkin pride and resistance to central authority. He was looking forward to getting back. I’ve had enough. Three months of this shit.
I thought about all these things as the plane headed south. I didn’t know how much my fellow travellers were. The couple sat to my left were English and they were staying at Kabira Bay/川平湾 for the entirety of their visit for the diving. The emerald waters, coral, manta rays and such were a huge draw to the island. It’s what you did. Of course, I didn’t. The sea isn’t somewhere to fuck around in. A view expressed by an islander to me later in the week which confirmed my smug sense of superiority about not getting into it.
At last the familiar island came into view and we all decanted into buses, taxis and cars. I sat in the outside smoking area before heading into town. There were familiar scents upon the breeze. I was in someways home. The place, the only one, where I would be happy to die.
(Coming in part three, more island wanderings, its distinct local tobacco history as well as a return to Japan proper, Osaka, before heading home. Should be out a week or so from now.)
Looking forward to 3/3