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The cozy relationship that developed between maritime Fujianese entrepreneurs and the Japanese Empire developed out of Xiamen’s identity as a translocal hub, and the Japanese–Fujianese relationship contributed significantly to the enduring dominance of the Fujianese over the Asian cocaine trade. Cocaine is therefore an entry point into the understudied world of Japanese imperialism in South China and Southeast Asia.

Historian Miriam Kingsberg’s recent book examines how the [Imperial] government sought to monopolize the drug trade and control drug use within their territorial possession of Manchukuo in North China (2014). Coastal southern Fujian offers a compelling comparison with Kingsberg’s analysis of Manchukuo, as Xiamen was a key site for Japanese informal empire in China but remained firmly under Chinese control until 1937. Under the formal control of a succession of local warlords, Xiamen was the center of the [Imperial] sphere of influence in South China, where the [Imperial] government never had to worry about drug use because it was not their jurisdiction.

From the [Imperial] perspective, Xiamen was attractive as the gateway from China to Southeast Asia, and the most important port of call for ships from [the Empire of] Japan’s new colony in Taiwan. By the second decade of the twentieth century, Xiamen was flooded with Taiwanese citizens (who were Japanese imperial citizens), and even more so with local people claiming Japanese–Taiwanese citizenship. These were people who were ethnically, culturally, and linguistically Chinese, but registered as Japanese: the so-called “registered people” (Ch. jimin 籍民; J. sekimin).

The [Imperial] consuls in Xiamen were engaged in a citizenship-based imperialism, peculiar to South China, wherein the [Imperial] government actively granted passports to tens of thousands of local Fujianese people (see, for example, Brooks 2000; Thilly 2015; Wang 2007). One of the stated goals of this practice was for the [Imperial] foreign ministry to extend jurisdiction over the business networks connecting China and Southeast Asia (Inoue 1993, 12–13). The [Imperial] consuls in Fujian clearly understood the potential of harnessing the entrepreneurial genius of translocal Xiamen.

A principal consequence of [the Imperial bourgeoisie’s] policy of granting passports to Fujianese was the rapid domination of the drug trade by people with Taiwanese citizenship. The extraterritorial protection granted to jimin by [Imperial] consuls and their independent police forces provided almost perfect insulation from local Chinese municipal and warlord governments (Esselstrom 2009, 43–44; Thai 2016, 91; see also Tseng 2014 on jimin-owned businesses in the port of Shantou).

Thus, an expanding drug trade seems foreseeable in hindsight; but, beyond the reluctance of [Imperial] consuls to reign in drug dealers, there is little evidence that a robust drug trade was the deliberate aim of Japan’s southern strategy. There is, however, ample evidence that people in Fujian flocked in large numbers to take up Japanese citizenship in order to better profit from the drug trade (Thilly 2015; Wang 2007).

In this sense, [Imperial] consuls and pharmaceutical companies worked together with Chinese drug traders to form an alternative model of Sino-Japanese cooperation in the 1920s and 1930s. In some cases, the relationships created through the drug trade furthered the cause of [Imperial] expansion into the Chinese mainland—in particular, the history of Taiwanese-owned opium dens and the rise of the Xiamen [Imperial] police force to protect them from Chinese interference (Thilly 2015; Wang 2007).

But in other cases—like the cocaine trade examined in this article—the end result was unpredictable, and less obviously advantageous to [the Empire of] Japan. As historian Steven Karch writes, cocaine was never a “vital product line” for the [Imperial] drug companies involved in production, and “the cocaine trade was just not that important” (1999, 158). The cocaine trade is thus an example of an unforeseen consequence of [Imperial] policy in South China and maritime Asia, as the only clear beneficiaries were Chinese smugglers and, to a lesser degree, the [Imperial] pharmaceutical companies who supplied them.

(Emphasis added.)