An obscure tomb in a small graveyard at a Chiba Prefecture temple marks the final resting place of Japan's wartime "Opium King," although the site betrays nothing of this dark cloud, nor the relationship the deceased had with key historical figures.
The kanji on what looks like an ordinary tombstone at Soneiji Temple in Ichikawa reads "Satomi-ke no Reii" ("Tomb of the Satomi Family"). The inscription was written by the late Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, grandfather of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to mark the grave of Hajime Satomi, who died in 1965.
Kishi was a senior government official in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria between 1936 and 1939 when he, as well as Gen. Hideki Tojo, reportedly established close relations with Satomi, who at the time headed Hung Chi Shan Tang, a Japanese opium firm that dominated the market in central China during the Japanese occupation.