日本在華南的販毒活動，1937-1945

Abstract

Japan's involvement in trafficking opium, morphine, heroin and other drugs in wartime occupied China had been duly verified and convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1946-1948. Facts revealed that that businesses organized and managed by the Japanese authorities and semi-authorities in 1937-1945 were large-scale in character and extensive in geographical regions. This paper, however, is confined to a study of the Japanese-sponsored and indirectly controlled drug-trafficking in the Japanese-occupied regions in south China, centering at the Amoy (Fukien) and Canton (Kwangtung) areas. The essay is divided into four major parts: 1. The drug-trafficking operated by the Japanese in Fukien and Kwangtung prior to 1937; 2. The Japanese-sponsored drug-trafficking in the Amoy area in 1937-1941; 3. The Japanese-involved drug-trafficking in Canton and its adjacent regions in 1937-1941; 4. The Japanese-related drug businesses in Kwangtung and Fukien in 1941-1945. In his concluding remarks, the author through analyzing various multi-language and multi-archival sources, considers that the wartime Japanese authorities set the production, transportation and sale of various drugs such as opium, morphine, heroin, etc. as a strategically important business similar to their control and procurement of key raw materials such as foodstuff, cotton and various basic metals. Legally, according to regulations, all the revenues from drug-trafficking were to be submitted to the Japanese government coffers. But actually, the Japanese bureaucrats of different levels had personally obtained a large amount of money through their corrupt management. Facts show that several highest level Japanese officials such as Mamoru Shigimitsu (the foreign minister in August 1945), Shiginori Togo (former foreign minister) and others had collected a huge amount of their respective ”commissions” in August 15-29, 1945 from a bank-deposited ￥ 300,000,000 fund which was originally part of a downpayment for guaranteed money from a large number of authorized Chinese drug-dealers in Japanese-occupied China.