WIT Life #162: Japan Tobacco
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
My interpreting travels currently take me to Raleigh, NC, once home to a thriving tobacco industry. However, in addition to formerly being a center for textiles and furniture, those days are gone and different sectors have risen to take their place. As the group I am working with is studying economic revital
ization, yesterday we visited the American Tobacco Historic District, once home to America’s largest tobacco plant. It has been converted into a multi-functional area which maintains the character of the historic buildings, while at the same time incorporating modern aspects to create a vibrant community of businesses and restaurants (We got to visit the headquarters of Burt’s Bees which is housed there!).
In an interesting incidence of convergence, before heading to the district I read an article in the WSJ about how Japan’s disaster has affected its tobacco industry. It highlights how the earthquake and tsunami destroyed both cigarette-making and supplier factories, as well as damaged distribution networks. As a result, smokers have been turning to foreign brands which are more easily accessible at this time (because they are not allowed to be made in Japan, their production was unaffected). This has been devastating to Japan Tobacco Inc. (JTI), the country’s largest cigarette manufacturer. Yesterday delivery of its top 7 brands finally restarted, but the remaining 97 are not expected to be available for weeks at the earliest.
One analyst commented that this might shake up the cigarette market: “Some consumers will change. They will try Kent, Lark, Virgina Slims or Marlboro as a trial and if they think it is better than JT, then they will stay. However, another disagreed that some customers might believe it is better to stay loyal and use whatever JT has to offer at this point rather than try a foreign brand: “While it is not as patriotic a mood as the ‘Buy America’ sentiment in the wake of 9/11, there could be a ‘Buy Japan’ movement among smokers after the 3/11 earthquake.” Japan has a $40 billion domestic cigarette market, so the impact will clearly be felt.
In following up on the radiation issue, the alert level for Japan’s nuclear disaster has now been upgraded from 5 to 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, putting it on par with Chernobyl.
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