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The story
Kazlaser (42), of the comedy duo Maple Chogokin, looked back on Showa-era smoking culture on a YouTube show, saying “Seriously, you could smoke anywhere back then” and “Movie theaters and places like that were really smoky” — comments that sparked discussion on 5ch. In the thread, posters piled on memories of the era, like ashtrays in train box seats and on station platforms, and ashtrays sitting on desks at work. But others pointed out that movie theaters had actually gone non-smoking fairly early on, and some questioned just how much of this Kazlaser — who is only 42 — could really know from firsthand experience, leaving the thread split over how reliable everyone’s memories actually were.
Kazlaser looks back on Showa-era smoking culture: “Seriously, you could smoke anywhere”
Kazlaser (42), of the comedy duo Maple Chogokin, appeared on an episode of the YouTube channel “Kazlaser and Shoin-ji’s Chill Room [Official]” uploaded on the 5th, where he talked about Showa-era smoking culture.
When the topic turned to cigarettes under the theme of “things that were allowed in the Showa era,” Kazlaser recalled, “Seriously, you could smoke anywhere back then. Nobody even thought it was odd.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
This guy's stories are all BS, nyah.
The movie theater part is definitely a tall tale.
Nicotine junkies getting triggered lol ("yani-kasu" = cigarette addict slang)
I don't do either, but fair enough.
Both are harmful, but cigarettes pollute the air, get flicked everywhere as litter, and wreck not just your own health but other people's too.
The front was non-smoking and the back was smoking, but there wasn't an actual wall between them, so it was hazy regardless.
Smoking was banned during takeoff and landing, so the second you hit cruising altitude and they announced "you can unbuckle now, you can smoke now," everyone lit up at once and it got smoky — a real wall of smoke.
Smoking seats were around until about 1997, right — literally the back rows. But on the flights I took, American airlines had already gone fully non-smoking by '93. That's part of why I didn't want to travel abroad.
Yeah, they had them — built right into the seats.
Same impression here — late at night, theater practically empty, everyone's a smoker so nobody complains… that kind of thing.
The same yakuza guy would come back to the same barbershop again and again; there was no Anti-Organized Crime Law yet, and they must've had money to burn.
Yakuza used to get ambushed a lot while getting their hair cut, huh.
I remember yakuza guys trading punches at the bathhouse entrance all the time — fighting over dumb stuff like getting splashed with hot water, lol.
Well, Showa was a freewheeling time, though I don't particularly want to go back.
That's probably when they had the hot towel draped over their face for a shave.
Forget the platform — even the box seats on local and rapid trains had ashtrays, lol.
The tracks right in front of the platform were basically a cigarette dump, lol.
While we're at it, station platforms had spittoons too — old guys would go "hawk, ptooey" into them.
① Phone junkies glued to their smartphones 24/7 no matter the situation
② Drunks who can't drink without getting wasted
③ Nicotine junkies who smoke outside designated areas and litter their butts
Nicotine junkies basically check all three boxes anyway, honestly.
It was smoky, bad for your health, left your clothes stinking — the worst.
I'm glad we now live in a world where selfish smokers get called out.
In the media industry especially, every single desk in the office had its own ashtray.
There was even manga where a mountain of butts overflowing from an ashtray was shorthand for "this guy is swamped with work."
But honestly, that's pretty much how it really was.
I loved the smell when you lit up with a match. I like the smell of a Zippo too, but it doesn't hold a candle to matches.
Those shop-branded matches were really something, weren't they.
Apparently November 11th is "Lighter Day" or something, and out of nowhere there's a radio ad right now going "let's make sure kids don't play around with lighters."
Made me wonder — do kids these days maybe have never even seen an open flame?
With matches, that whoosh when they flare up scares kids,
but with lighters they seem totally unfazed, lol.
They knew full well — it was common knowledge.
But even when other countries started cracking down on tobacco, and it got dropped as a sponsor from F1 and motorcycle racing with logos banned outright, Japan was still saying "those guys are nuts," lol.
Schools, hospitals, even planes — you could smoke there. Honestly it's harder to think of a place where you couldn't.
Yeah, schools too. The staff room, obviously, and at the really rough schools even the room where they isolated the delinquent kids had an ashtray.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Smoking regulations in Japan rolled out gradually, so periods when movie theaters and workplaces allowed smoking across the board overlapped — depending on the region and facility — with periods when restrictions had already kicked in. In the thread, claims that “movie theaters were already non-smoking even in the late Showa 50s (late 1970s–early 1980s)” show up right alongside memories of “you could smoke there just fine” — likely reflecting differences in the specific places and times each poster actually experienced, rather than either side being simply wrong. It’s also worth noting that laws formally mandating measures against secondhand smoke, and the spread of blanket indoor smoking bans, are a fairly recent development — which is why the gap between the thread’s “you could smoke anywhere” sense of the past and today’s regulations can be hard to grasp for generations who never lived through the Showa era. The fact that Kazlaser himself is only 42 is also why some commenters questioned just how much of what he describes comes from his own firsthand experience — a reaction rooted in that same generational gap in how the era is remembered.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Hayabusa+) thread ‘[Entertainment] Kazlaser looks back on Showa-era smoking culture: “Seriously, you could smoke anywhere” / “Movie theaters and places like that were really smoky”.’
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