Opium

It was probably Horiguchi Daigaku who first introduced the works of Claude Farrere to Japan. I still remember, six or seven years ago now, his translation of the story about the gunboat Fox, done for Mita Bungaku.

The story of the Fox, of course, was a war tale; but what permeates Farrere’s work is the smoke of Oriental opium. Recently I read Farrere’s Beyond Silence, translated by Yanome Gen’ichi, and once again found myself confronted with that smoke. Yet Beyond Silence carries, besides the fragrant smell of opium, the odor of the dead as well. It carries the smell of corpses manufactured by the firm of Brothers Poe and Baudelaire.

“Ah, there, I heard it. No, perhaps it was only my imagination. I cannot tell. If it came leaking out of the land of the dead, it was far too loud a sound. There is no reason anything should be breaking here. A coffin sneezes in the mud. A board is shaken. The stout nails driven into it creak with a dreadful sound...”

This is one of the many echoes that Poe’s “Premature Burial” sent across the Atlantic. But that hardly matters. What struck me as a little interesting was the passage quoted below:

“And so, after repeated failures in trying to produce opium on French soil, they racked their brains in every possible way. Then they planted poppy seeds brought from Tokyo in a cemetery enriched by corpses, and the results were unexpectedly good: the plants developed their proper character. Now, merely by scoring those poppy heads swollen with poisonous sap, one can make brown tears come dripping out just as one wishes...”

The association of opium with the dead did not begin with Farrere’s work. Lately, while idly reading Yu’s Notes from the Right Terrace Immortal’s Studio, I discovered that such a popular belief had also existed among the Chinese. I came upon it in the story called “Jia Shen’an.”

Jia Shen’an was, it seems, an old licentiate living toward the end of the Qianlong era. One night, in a dream, he went to what appeared to be the front of a large government office. All its gates were shut fast, and in the deep stillness there was not a soul to be seen anywhere. “Just as he stood there wandering to and fro, suddenly several men appeared, escorting a woman from afar, and came up to the outside of the gate.” Then, for some reason, they stripped off all the woman’s clothes. She was still young; nor was she without a certain beauty. “She stood there naked, shining white; her look of shame and humiliation was almost unbearable to behold.” Fired with righteous anger, Jia at once stepped forward and rebuked them for their outrageous conduct.

“Who are you people, to dare behave with such insolence?”

But they only smiled and replied:

“There is nothing here to find strange.”

“Before the words were finished, the gate suddenly opened. Several men came out carrying a huge barrel on their shoulders, and behind them followed an official clerk holding documents in his hands. At once the crowd herded the naked woman inside. Jia also followed them in.” After passing through several gates, they reached a wide courtyard, where “he saw several hundred men and women. Some were standing, some sitting, some lying down. All were naked, without a thread on them. In the hall above sat an official. Before him stood a great pressing-bed. Several strong men, holding huge iron forks, seized men and women at will, pinned them into the trough, and pressed them with great stones. Fat and blood streamed down in profusion. Basins were placed below to receive it, and whenever a basin was full it was poured into the huge barrel. This was done more than ten times; at last the barrel was full. Several men carried it out. The official signed the documents and handed them to a clerk, who went out with them.” Then, when Jia looked at the clerk’s face, he saw it was Zhou Dafu, his former neighbor, long since buried in the grave. Jia stepped forward and called him by name.

“Why are you here? Surely this is no place to remain long. Come out with me at once.”

Zhou answered in astonishment. Jia then asked him what the stuff inside the barrel was.

“Opium paste.”

At the end of the Qianlong reign, opium had not yet become as fashionable as it is today. Accordingly, Jia too had no idea what opium was.

“What is this thing called opium smoke?”

“For a long time now the age has been peaceful, and the world suffers from overpopulation. It is fitting that there should be some great calamity to reduce it. Of all great calamities, none surpass floods, fires, warfare, and the sword. But when such disasters come, the wise and the foolish alike perish together; even the doctrine that Heaven blesses the good and punishes the lewd often breaks down at such times. Therefore the Heavenly Emperor convened an assembly of the gods and decided in particular to inaugurate the calamity of opium smoke. The calamity of opium smoke borrows the sap of the poppy flower in the human world, refines it into paste, and leaves it for people to eat and smoke. Those who partake of this smoke are within the calamity; those who do not partake are outside it. Thus men bring it upon themselves, and cannot blame the Creator for inhumanity. If this calamity removes the excess of the population, then floods, fires, war, and the sword may be reduced by half or more. However, the poppy belongs merely to the grasses and flowers, and has existed in the world since ancient times. Its sap, moreover, is too thin and weak; it cannot be boiled down into paste. Therefore an order was given to the ruler of the nether darkness: from the Avici Hell he was to select the souls of those guilty of disloyalty, impiety, shamelessness, and the violation of righteousness, and send them here; their fat and blood were to be extracted and handed over to the gods of mountains, hills, plains, marshes, graves, and wastes upon the earth; and this fat and blood was to be poured into the roots of the poppy, so that it might rise from the root to the bud. Then the sap would naturally become rich and dense, and once refined by boiling, its color would turn dark and lustrous. Mark my words: within a few decades, this smoke will spread throughout the world.”

Jia tried to ask more. “Suddenly more people appeared, driving before them dozens of men and women. They lashed them cruelly with whips, and their cries rose all together.” Jia started awake in terror. Afterward he told this dream to others, but not one of them believed him. In time, by the middle years of the Daoguang era, opium really did come into vogue. Jia, to be sure, had already joined the number of the dead by then. But the story of his dream still remained in people’s ears, and before long everyone began repeating, “There is the fat and blood of dead men in opium smoke”....

Was the idea that the finest opium could be obtained from poppies planted in a graveyard something born of Farrere’s imagination? Or was it born from the Chinese popular belief quoted above? I am, of course, in no position to state decisively which it was. I can only suppose that this popular belief itself may perhaps have its roots in the tale of Yu the Beauty’s blood turning into the flower that bears her name.

One last thing I should like to add is that opium smoke, more than tobacco smoke, and especially more than that of cigarettes or cigars, possesses a strongly Oriental fragrance. If one were to seek a smell close to that of opium smoke, it would be the smell of star-anise leaves gathered up and burned by a temple caretaker in some deserted corner of a graveyard. For that reason, the smell of opium smoke readily calls up associations of graves, the dead, and death, not only for Chinese of the Qing dynasty, but even for us modern Japanese. Yet those associations are not necessarily colored by the hues of Les Fleurs du mal. As I write this piece, what comes back to me instead is a haiku by Seisei that I read once long ago:

Early winter: chrysanthemums on the graves around Yanaka.