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"I'm fine today...because I can enjoy the taste of cigarette!"
(Dec.27, 2006)

"I'm fine today...because I can enjoy the taste of cigarette!" This is a cigarette promotion words, which was once well-known to Japanese. I initiated smoking when Japanese tobacco companies started the cigarette campaign with these promotion words. Nobody thought about the health hazards of smoking. This was about 50 years ago. At that time, tobacco was a symbol of great men; YOSHIDA Shigeru's cigars, General MacArthur's cone pipe, etc. Furthermore, tobacco seemed essential for many writers and painters.

Today, tobacco is a perfect villain in the world. Smoking is now banned in almost every transport facility. Currently, JR barely allows smoking in smoking carriages. However, the smoking carriages are always uncrowded. Even smokers prefer to have a seat in a non-smoking carriage, and they move to a smoking carriage if they want to smoke. Does the top management of JR know this fact? JR was launched by privatizing and restructuring the former Japan National Railways. Since then, JR has considerably improved its services and efficiency. However, they still remain unchanged in respect of the issue of train smoking.

Talking about smoking - I had an unforgettable experience in an airplane about 25 years ago. I occupied the seat next to an American medical doctor. That was a non-smoking seat. We chatted for a while. And then, cigarette smoke drifted from the smoking seats behind us. He became irate and told the flight attendant to change his seat. She used her brain quickly and found two seats a bit farther away from the smoking seats, then the case was closed. I also moved to the new seat with him.

I was very impressed by how he strongly insisted on his right. Americans are not Japanese. This was not a trivial fact to me, a business person working for a trading firm.

After the incident, he went back to his normal self. He was quite a gentleman. He came to Japan to present his paper at a medical conference. His subject was about MRI.

In scceeding years, MRI has become very common in the world. Now, the 30% of MRI in the world are used in Japan, whose population accounts only for 2% of the world population. This is one of the facts about healthcare of Japan.

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