Note 4 — XXV
Reading edition
The tobacco in China appears to have come from the Philippines. “The memoranda discovered in Wang-tao leave no possible doubt that it was first introduced into South China from the Philippine Islands in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, most probably by way of Japan.”—(Notes and Queries, China and Japan, May 31st, 1857.)
From Schlegel, in Batavia, it was brought by the Portuguese into Japan somewhere between the years 1573 and 1591, and spread itself so rapidly in China that we find even as early as 1538, that the sale of it was forbidden under penalty of beheading.
According to Notes and Queries, China and Japan, July 31, 1857, the use of tobacco was quite common in the “Manchu” army. In a Chinese work, Natural History Miscellany, it is written: “Yen t’sao (literally smoke plant) was introduced into Fukien about the end of the Wan-li Government, between 1573 and 1620, and was known as Tan-pa-ku (from Tombaku).”