Pipe Smoke and Endangered Species: What Kind of World Do We Lose When Culture Disappears in the Shadow of Regulation?

The World Is Strange Vol. 8

The Vanishing Culture of the Pipe

I smoke a pipe from time to time.

I cannot smoke in designated smoking areas, but in smoking-permitted bars where I have time to spare, I enjoy the time spent slowly rolling the smoke.

Pipes have their own dedicated ashtrays.
They are large and feature a cork in the center called a "pipe knocker," designed for gently tapping out the finished tobacco.

However, almost no establishments carry these.
When I start smoking my pipe, a waiter trying to be helpful will bring me an ashtray, but unfortunately, it is usually one for cigars.

Cigar ashtrays are characterized by large grooves for resting the cigar and do not have a knocker like pipe ashtrays do.
In other words, their purposes are completely different.

In authentic bars in Ginza, there are still a few places that properly provide pipe ashtrays. But even those are decreasing year by year.

The way these tools are handled is just one example of how close the culture of pipe smoking is to extinction.

However, young people these days do not even know the word "pipe" itself.
Every time I am asked, "What is that?" or "Is that a cigar?" over and over, I feel like writing an explanation on a piece of paper and carrying it around with me.

In the memories of the Showa era, pipes had more of a presence.
When I mention names like Popeye, Sherlock Holmes, or MacArthur, young people look at me as if I am naming prehistoric creatures.

The Aesthetics of Gestures Learned from Magazines

When I was a high school student, magazines like Popeye and Hot-Dog Press, which I devoured, would proudly feature articles on "How to smoke a cigarette in a cool way."

In them, it said:

• Take out the cigarette, put it in your mouth, and light it

• Do not look at the cigarette during that sequence of movements

• When lighting it, do not make a smoky face, but a "dazzled face"

Content like this was introduced quite seriously.

I also remember learning techniques for opening, closing, and lighting Zippo lighters.

Looking back, it was an absurdly excessive aesthetic, but for young people at the time, cigarettes were not just a luxury item, but a textbook for learning adult mannerisms.
They were props for imitating a 'way of life,' not just for nicotine.

The 'Cigarette Persona' Created by Cinema

The source of this aesthetic of mannerisms was cinema.

Once upon a time, countless characters who smoked cigarettes, cigars, and pipes appeared in the world of film. Each tool was assigned its own 'persona'.

The 'pinnacle' of cool cigarette-smoking techniques was considered to be Humphrey Bogart in the movie Casablanca.

The profile of Bogie puffing smoke in a dimly lit bar was the very symbol of 'masculine sex appeal'.

Casablanca was a 1940s film, and even for my generation, it was already a classic, but because of its age, it was conversely accepted as a 'perfected aesthetic'.

Around the same time, Julie (Kenji Sawada) was singing in 'Casablanca Dandy,' 'Bogie, Bogie, your era was good.'
The men of that era must have been projecting their longing onto the masculine aesthetic of a bygone age.

In other words, what we were absorbing was,an 'aesthetic of mannerisms that transcended time'.

In film, the role played by cigarettes was clear.

Bogie's cigarette represented loneliness and resignation.
The cigarette Robert De Niro lights represents a 'criminal's resolve'.
Jean-Paul Belmondo's cigarette represents a provocative and cheeky sex appeal.

When it comes to cigars, the meaning becomes even more explicit.
As props symbolizing 'power,' 'money,' and 'control,' cigars are indispensable in mafia movies. Just by Al Capone puffing on a cigar, the air becomes a notch heavier.

On the other hand, when a mistress holds a thick cigar next to the boss, a 'dangerous sex appeal' dwells there. It is a mysterious allure that seems to wrap itself in the boundary between violence and temptation.

When it comes to pipes, the character portrayal changes completely.
Characters who smoke pipes are invariably 'thinking people'.
The sight of Sherlock Holmes slowly exhaling pipe smoke was truly a 'symbol of intellect'.

In short,cigarettes are for sex appeal, cigars for control, and pipes for contemplation.

I think the reason young people at the time wanted to smoke cigarettes by imitating movies was that they wanted to smoke the 'persona,' not the nicotine.

There is an 'age that suits' cigarettes

However, just imitating a movie doesn't guarantee you'll look cool.
There is also such a thing as an 'age that suits' cigarettes.

Take aloha shirts, for example. When a man in his 20s wears one, for some reason he looks like a 'thug,' but when an older man wears one, it instantly becomes 'resort wear'.

Pipes are the same. They don't suit the young.
And unfortunately, they almost never suit women.

If it's a cigar or a cigarette, even if a woman smokes it in a movie, it can look quite picturesque.

But pipes, for some reason, are strictly for older men.
The reason isn't logical; it's likely a matter of 'presence'.

It seems growing old isn't all bad.

Japanese tobacco culture has its own unique flow.

Japan is a bit unique; it developed into the 'kiseru' rather than the pipe.
This is said to be rooted in Japan's 'blade culture'.

It was precisely because of the technology for blades with sharp cutting edges, symbolized by the Japanese sword, that tobacco leaves could be shredded as finely as needles.

As a result, unlike European pipes, a kiseru culture was born that could be smoked with a small bowl.

Pipes, aloha shirts, and kiseru—.
In all of them, there existed a mysterious compatibility: 'whether or not it suits the depth of a person's life'.

When did tobacco become the 'absolute evil'?

Even though smoking rates are falling, the number of lung cancer patients continues to rise.

If you recall the smoking environment of the Showa era, a simple calculation would suggest that 'most people born in the Showa era should have been wiped out by lung cancer,' but such voices are immediately silenced.

Tobacco was said to be the cause of lung cancer, but before we knew it, it was replaced by the convenient phrase 'cause of health damage'.

And then only the simplified composition of 'tobacco = evil' remained.

As a smoker myself, I 100% understand the feelings of people who dislike smoke.
If someone smoked next to me while I was eating, I would be annoyed too.

But—attacking people even when they are smoking in a designated smoking area is, by any measure, strange.

If you don't like it, go to a smoke-free area.
If you like it, go to a smoking area.

That's all there is to it.
Yet, in Japan, 'smoking areas themselves' are rapidly decreasing.
Despite collecting about 2 trillion yen in tax revenue annually, almost no space is provided for smokers.

While indoor smoking bans with outdoor allowances are the global standard, Japan has somehow chosen to regulate outdoor spaces first.

Can't smoke indoors.
Can't smoke outdoors.
Yet, they collect a massive amount of tax.

—It's absurd.

Incidentally, the use of tobacco tax revenue is said to be for covering the deficit of the former Japanese National Railways.

It has been about 40 years since it became JR.
The current reality is that the burden of the former National Railways' deficit is being pushed onto smokers.

The debt of the former National Railways has not been fully resolved even now.
Tobacco tax is what bears the burden of filling this massive hole.

However, it is only smokers who pay this tax.
And yet—smokers receive absolutely no services from that tax money.

Fares don't become cheaper.
Smoking areas aren't being maintained.
It isn't used for health measures.

They are simply being forced to shoulder the 'deficit of services they don't use' for decades on end.

Is there any other 'taxation model on a specific minority' as unreasonable as this?

A greeting between endangered species in Thailand

Previously, while staying in Thailand, I went down to the first-floor restaurant to have breakfast at the hotel.

There was a unique smell where the humidity characteristic of the tropics mixed with the cold air of the air conditioning. Rattan chairs were lined up on the outdoor terrace, and time flowed slowly there, as if to indicate that it was the only place where 'smoking was allowed'.

Since it was a late hour, the only people sitting on the wide terrace were me and
a white-haired old man sitting a few seats away.

White hair, a white beard, a sun-tanned face, and a worn-out long-sleeved linen shirt.
Even though he was just sitting there, he had the composure of a seasoned traveler.

After finishing my meal and taking a sip of coffee, I took out my pipe.

The sound of a tuk-tuk engine passed by nearby.

The very moment I was about to light my pipe—
at almost the same time, the old man took a pipe out of his chest pocket.

It wasn't that we were surprised by each other.
There was just a strange sense of relief, like when endangered species accidentally encounter one another, a feeling of 'Oh, so you're still around.'

The old man lit his pipe and enjoyed the first puff slowly.

While lightly turning the bowl of the pipe with his fingertips, he exhaled the smoke in a thin, single line.

That gesture was truly natural, ingrained in his body like a habit of many years.

Our eyes met.

Without smiling or nodding, we both just lifted our pipes ever so slightly.

Without a word, that alone was enough to establish a conversation.
'You get it too, don't you?'

Words were unnecessary.
I felt as if our lives had crossed for just a moment along with the pipe smoke.
It was a quiet ritual of confirming our existence.

Smokers are not villains. Just a minority.

Japan is a place where tobacco as a culture has vanished, leaving only regulations behind.

While there should be both the freedom to not smoke and the freedom to smoke, before we knew it, only the “smoking side” had been driven into the corners of society.

I smoke my pipe in a small way again today.
As I watch the pipe smoke, I recall the silent greeting I shared with an old man at that hotel.

──Have the smokers of this country truly become an endangered species?

Thank you for reading until the end.
I would be happy if this record, which looks at places where the light does not reach, serves as an opportunity for you to think about something.
Your “likes” and “follows” provide the strength to continue to the next record.

✒Author-related series

If you are interested in the author, please take a look at this as well.
→“Before Memory: An Introduction”

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