A newly discovered document on wartime Japan's Shanghai-based opium dealer shows the Tokyo government was deeply engaged in the trade to make money off Chinese addicts.
But Japan was not the only state involved in drug-trafficking. It was just a latecomer.
The colonial governments of Britain, Portugal, Holland and France had all heavily depended on opium-related revenues from areas of Asia under their control in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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