Can Smoking be Awesome?

I have had years of Pavlovian conditioning to make me hate smoking. Every time someone lights up around me I end up smelling like crap too. Must be all my luscious hair.

So I am in no way unbiased on the issue of whether smoking is fucking retarded. It is.

Hmm, but maybe you are a smoker. Don’t feel that I am judging you. Studies show that you probably feel guilty enough for the both of us.

And yet, in Japan I am starting to suspect that smoking could secretly be awesome. My past experience puts me in a position to evaluate this claim. Obviously because of my intense feelings on the subject it will be a hard case to prove. Are you ready, Japan?

Bring it on.

Advertisements

Where I come from, ads got banned so long ago I can barely remember watching them from my lead paint-lined crib. After that, we could only get our advertising subliminally through movies and TV. Then all of a sudden filmmakers decided that realism was important for some reason. It just didn’t make sense for the action hero to stop to catch their breath every hundred metres as they chased the evil criminal mastermind through the bustling train station/docks/market/slave factory/subterranean hideout/space brothel. So now smoking on TV is only for the truly evil or the infirm, as God intended.

The only advertisement you can see in New Zealand nowadays is teen mothers dutifully teaching their children about cancer.

Actually now that I think about it, I don’t think you can advertise smoking on TV in Japan either. It’s hard to know. When a sheep is dancing on a roller coaster and a space octopus gives it a yellow box while cheerfully singing into a floating microphone in a language I don’t understand then there’s about a 12% chance that that ad could be for smoking. It could be for sanitary napkins, trousers or buying insurance also.

Japanese ads are awesome.

But smoking doesn’t need your TV ads to make an impact. Japan has the most effective advertising campaign for smoking I’ve ever seen. It’s called life.

For example, there are some non-smoking areas in Japan. But I’m not sure why, because they’re usually located directly beside the smoking area in the same room. This is like having your Babies area next to your Dingoes area and expecting everything to work out fine. If there’s one thing smoke can be relied upon doing it’s whatever the fuck it wants.

Nobody puts Smoky in the corner.

So at present, I would estimate I’m smoking a pack a day, and that’s just out of my milkshake.

The most effective non-smoking area is the train. Even if someone’s smoking right next to the train, you just breezed by at 80km/h. Ahahahahaha!

Even if you could smoke on the train, good luck getting your hands up to your face to light it. Even if you could light it, good luck not burning someone’s ear off.

But we’re talking about advertising here. Stay on topic.

The second prong in Japan’s two-pronged assault on sissy non-smokers is the vending machine. Aside from the insane fact that you can buy cigarettes from a vending machine over here and they only cost 400 yen (which is amazing), every machine that sells cigarettes also has an ad for a particular brand prominently displayed on the machine or nearby. Or both, even if it’s the same ad.

I have snapped some samples of the truly magnificent ads I have seen in and around Kobe. I’ve used my innate genius to peer beyond the veil of advertising and tell you the underlying subliminal message for each ad. Now you can buy your death sticks with confidence, from a machine that is laughing at you and planning what to do with your planet when you’re gone.

Basic

The Subliminal Message: Smoking is Cute!

Oh my God, that dog is so cute! I bet that cute dog would totally smoke those if it could. But it has no hands so it can’t. That makes sense. But it’s really good at juggling, another activity that is usually pretty reliant on having hands. Did a person throw those cigarette packs at that dog but it caught them all on its nose and started juggling them? Ha ha, that’s funny! I wonder if I could teach my dog to do that…

This dog is so cute though. Did I mention that? But it’s kind of ugly too. And I find that cute. It’s cutegly.

Smart move, advertisers. Now your product appeals to the cute, the ugly, those people who like the dichotomy of cute and ugly things, and those people interested in canine juggling. 

That's pretty comprehensive.

Piannissiamo

The Subliminal Message: Smoking gives you Superpowers!

Did you notice that this hot lady has gold lips? This ad doesn’t come right out and say that Pianissimo cigarettes made her lips gold. But there’s a big old packet of them right there next to her gold-lipped face, so draw your own conclusions.

Let us assume for the sake of argument that Pianissimo cigarrettelettes caused this affliction. This is amazing! Ever since I was old enough to understand that with great power comes great responsibility I’ve been trying to get great power while avoiding great responsibility. With Pianissimo, I can do both, trading my own mortality for a delightfully slim and classy Midas touch.

Do you want some Pianissimo’s now?

What about now?

The one nagging doubt in my mind is, what if there’s something they’re not telling us? What if this woman’s entire respiratory system is now gold-plated? Obviously that would be fatal, in a James Bond villain kind of way.

Damn you, Pianissimo. God damn you.

I should probably try these out on a dog first. After I teach it to juggle the boxes, of course.

Marlboro

The Subliminal Message: Smoking is Badass.

Marlboro has been using the same subliminal message since 1876. Back then all their ads used to have a grizzled-looking cowboy sauntering around and smoking. I actually think this is a really good advertisement for smoking, for two reasons.

Reasons Cowboys are Good Advertisements for Smoking

1)    Cowboys are always out doing cowboy stuff way out in remote areas of the land. So the only person they will bother with their smoking is the other cowboy they have sex with.

You really should quit, darling.

2)    Nobody believes in cowboys anyway.

Anyway, for whatever reason Marlboro have done away with the cowboy. But they kept the horse?

What is it with smoking ads and animals? Are animals buying cigarettes now? Is that where we are as a planet?!

But there’s nothing much badass about a white horse all on its own right. It could be standing on a pile of kicked-to-death orphans, but we can’t see that. It’s just a horse, hangin’ out, wishing someone would put a sweet tasty Marlboro in its mouth and light it. The guy in charge of advertising, also standing on a pile of kicked-to-death orphans, sent this memo:

We need something more badass. And goddammit, Suzie, BRING ME MORE ORPHANS! Signed Bill.

So someone went back to the drawing board and we got this:

Holy shit, is that a mountain lion? I can’t even begin to fathom what that has to do with smoking. I guess it’s conceivable that this giant feral cat… wants… my smokes? And it’s going to lead with its special move, Ice Blast?

I’m really confused right now, but that’s what the Mountain Lion wants. I have to be ready. Red Dead Redemption has taught me that nothing good comes from meeting a mountain lion except for $6 worth of skin, if you’re lucky.

I also need to think of a special move, really fast. Jesus, I can’t believe I moved to Japan without a special move. It was on the immigration form and everything.

I’ve got it! Gold Lips Kancho Jugglllllllllllle!!! Oraa Oraa!

The Family Legacy

Finally, no discussion of smoking in Japan would be complete without taking about the social forces at work here. Japan is a very traditional country. And sometimes that manifests in unusual ways. 

I was in a café with a Japanese friend the other day and he pulled out his pack of smokes. I asked him whether he thought he would ever stop smoking one day. His reply went something like this: ‘My grandfather smoked and my father smokes. So I smoke.’

In other words, the men in his family hand down a legacy of death.

Is anyone else thinking about ninja right now?

"Happy birthday, boy, I got you these. I took them from a mountain lion that I choked to death."

So far I think we can safely say that I have proved smoking is more awesome here than I could have ever imagined. But I am not so easily convinced. I must investigate further. If you don’t hear from me in two months, give my notes to the Police and tell them that smoking has struck again…