Textile & Fashion

The habit of smoking was first seen amongst women of the pleasure quarters and delinquent youths. They would vie with each other for ever more outrageously long pipes, which they would pass around them, to establish bonds of friendship. Smoking belonged to the world of extreme and non-standard behaviour.
In the Edo Period, the shogunate was concerned about the fire risk of smoking and also that tobacco was taking land out of rice production, and so they banned it. In 1616, it was forbidden to grow the tobacco plant, on pain of 50 days imprisonment for a townsperson and 30 days for a farmer. In 1623, to smoke carried the punishment of death. But the law was never fully enforced and was increasingly ignored, and smoking became a common passtime. By the end of the 17th century most areas of Japan were producing tobacco.