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Things Fall Apart

This chapter addresses Hoshi Pharmaceuticals' financial fallout in the opium scandal's aftermath. It argues that the scandal revealed reasons for Hoshi's success that the company had hoped to conceal: profiteering from an exclusive monopoly over morphine and, quite possibly, from opium trafficking, both facilitated by collusive connections to government elites. The chapter also sheds a light on the shaky debt-financed foundations and questionable accounting methods on which the company was built. The opium scandal wreaked financial havoc when the company was at its most highly leveraged point in its short history. The chapter then unfolds how the company struggled to meet payroll and how blue- and white-collar workers went to the picket lines. It further discusses how creditors and investors tried to liquidate the company and salvage assets such as intellectual property related to its patent medicines.