Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,68

could become contaminated with his smoking ethos. All smokers are fools. All smokers are insane.

Eventually, I could remain silent no longer. It might have been all right if I were the only one, but other smokers were being insulted, too. Just as I was thinking of issuing some kind of reply, I received a call from the Chief Editor of a magazine called Rumours of Truth, for which I wrote a regular column. He urged me not to give in to this pressure from the newly empowered anti-smoking lobby, but to fight back against it. I quickly wrote my next submission to the magazine, which went something like this:

“Discrimination against smokers seems to have reached new heights. This results from a combination of extremism and the simple-mindedness of non-smokers. Anti-smoking proponents show an utter lack of understanding, precisely because they do not smoke. Mouth ulcers are cured by cigarette smoke. Tobacco soothes nervous irritation. Admittedly, people who don’t smoke are healthy and have wholesome complexions. That’s because many of them take part in sports. But they also smile for no reason. They don’t think deeply about anything, and are totally uninteresting to talk to. Their conversation is superficial and their topics shallow. Their thinking is unfocussed and vague. They go off on a tangent without warning. They can’t discuss any topic on more than one level. Their reasoning is not inductive but deductive. That’s why they’re so awfully easy to understand, yet, on the other hand, are always so quick to jump to hackneyed conclusions. When it comes to sport, they can prattle on endlessly, however little interest we show. But when the conversation turns to philosophy or literature, they fall asleep. In the old days, the air at long, difficult meetings would be thick with cigarette smoke. But now the conference room has been sanitized by air purifiers, ion generators and the like. Does that mean we can meet in relaxation? Au contraire. Meetings are over before they’ve started, or so I hear. Everyone’s in such a hurry to leave. But of course – non-smokers can’t bear long conversations, deep conversations, difficult conversations. As soon as the business at hand is over, or they know what they’re supposed to do, they get up and go. They can’t keep still. If someone detains them, they keep looking at their watches impatiently. But when they’re angry, they just go on and on. What’s more – whether male or female – they’re all sex-mad. The more they take care of their health, the more they neglect to use their brains – at the expense of their health, ironically. In other words, they become imbeciles. What’s the point of living such long, healthy lives if they’re nothing but blockheads? Large groups of foolish old people would become a burden to the minority of younger people. Do they really mean to keep playing golf until they’re a hundred? Tobacco was a truly great discovery – it has given people depth of feeling. Nevertheless, even journalists today are jumping on the anti-smoking bandwagon. What’s that all about?! Newspaper editing rooms should be epitomized by murky clouds of tobacco smoke. Why are newspapers so uninteresting today? – Because the editing rooms are all too clean!!”

This article sparked a storm of protest as soon as it was published. Of course, originating from non-smokers, there was nothing particularly new about it. Some of it was simply idiotic – the writer would merely turn my argument on its head by replacing “nonsmokers” with “smokers”. These reactions were duly published in Rumours of Truth, where they were deemed suitably illogical to represent the views of non-smokers.

It was from about this time that I started receiving malicious phone calls and hate mail. The calls were simple abuse, along the lines of “So you want to die young, then? Moron!” The letters were similar, though sometimes rather witty – one, for example, contained a lump of tar and the message “Eat this and die!”

Soon, cigarette advertising was completely banned from all media. People’s inclination to follow the crowd now came to the fore, and discrimination against smokers grew more overt. Though I spent most of my time at home writing, I would also venture out on occasion – to buy books, for example. On one such occasion, I shook in anger when I saw this sign in a nearby park:

NO DOGS OR SMOKERS

So now we were no better than dogs. That made me all the more defiant, and my will became so