126 ST NICOTINE 



historic Countevblaste of our British Solomon and the ful- 

 minations of two popes, their efforts to put out the pipe were 

 unavailing. Indeed, as usually happens in conflicts of the 

 kind, opposition begat opposition, till at last the will of the 

 many triumphed over the prejudice and power of the few. 

 The people had tasted the forbidden leaf and liked it so well 

 that each offered to share with his neighbour the pleasure and, 

 if need be, the punishment attached to the indulgence. So 

 in course of time the edict died a natural death, and was 

 decently buried under a mild ceremonial wherein the Shogun 

 enjoined his loving subjects to be careful and not let them- 

 selves be seen smoking outside their houses. Rein, in his 

 Industries of Japan, says of this edict, 'of all the laws of 

 the Tokugawa rule probably none has proved so ineffectual 

 as the edict of 1612 against the smoking and planting of 

 tobacco.' 



The earliest native record of tobacco is found in an old 

 family chronicle of an eminent physician named Saka, of 

 Nagasaki; it is dated 1605, and runs as follows : ' In this 

 year tobacco was brought in ships of the Nanban people, 

 and was shown near Nagasaki ; it was known in Bungo (the 

 Portuguese settlement) from the beginning and in Sasuma ' 

 a district noted to this day for the superior quality of its 

 tobacco. A further note on the subject occurs two years 

 later, 1607, and is to the effect that, 'of late a thing has 

 come into fashion called tabako ; it is said to have originated 

 out of the Nanban, and consists of large leaves which are cut 

 up, and of which one drinks the smoke.' In the same record 

 incidental allusion is made to the supposed medicinal pro- 

 perties of the Indian weed, a notion derived from the natives 

 of America and propagated in Europe with much insistence 

 by Jean Nicot. The writer is never weary of chronicling the 

 fact that, ' a thing has been coming out of the Nanban 



