Gendering and Sexualising Opium Consumption in Manchukuo, 1932–1945

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the sociocultural history of opium consumption and its popularisation through the beauty of female attendants in Manchukuo, which was a crucial part of the Japanese Empire and an important ‘contact zone’ of diverse cultures. It offers a glimpse into the opium–prostitution nexus by exploring the legal, commercial, social, and cultural dimensions of the gendered and sexualised practice of opium consumption, which reinforced a highly entangled triangulation of imperial consultants from Japan and Korea, Chinese opium shop-owners, and consumers of multiple nationalities. As such, the article highlights how this subculture developed at a time of increasingly pervasive surveillance of sex workers as well as deeply asymmetrical power relations between imperial subjects and the Chinese locals, and along class and gender lines. In examining how female attendants promoted opium within illegal establishments, I argue that the gendered and sexualised consumption of opium reshaped the culture and economy of the substance’s use and that this culture, its regulation, and imperialism damaged Manchukuo society. By doing so, the article reveals the subculture of gendered and sexualised opium consumption in Manchukuo and the Japanese Empire more broadly.