Peace Short (10)

ピース（10本入） is the product the rest of the line is measured against, and the only 両切り cigarette still made in Japan. Both ends are unfiltered. It launched in January 1946 as the first freely sold cigarette in the country, at 7 yen for ten, when other ten-packs went for 20 to 60 sen. It was sold only on Sundays and public holidays, one pack per person.

That price is the reason the brand exists. Peace was positioned as a premium cigarette from launch, and the money went into the name and the pack rather than the tobacco: Raymond Loewy was paid 1.5 million yen in 1952 to redesign it, a fee that drew public comment precisely because it was about what a cabinet minister earned in a year. Sales went from 2.6 billion sticks a year to 15 billion, and the redesign is usually credited as the event that raised Japanese industrial design in general.

The pack’s navy blue gave the brand the name ピース still carries in the trade, and the dove with an olive leaf in its beak is a reference to Noah’s Ark — the dove that came back with the leaf, signalling the flood was over and dry ground near.

What the numbers say

Spec	Value
Tobacco type	Flue-cured (Virginia, 黄色種) 100%
Tar	28 mg
Nicotine	2.3 mg
Carbon monoxide	not published
Length	70 mm
Format	Unfiltered both ends (両切り), paper box
Packs per carton	not published
Pack price	¥300 JPY

JT publishes no carbon monoxide figure for any Peace variant, so the archive records it as unknown rather than inferring it. 28 mg is the highest tar yield of any cigarette manufactured in Japan, and 両切り is now unique in the domestic market — JT briefly gave Shinsei and Golden Bat filters in 2016 and then withdrew them, leaving this one.

In vending machines it is normally sold as two packs at a time, since a single ¥300 pack will not cover the ¥600 most machines expect, though a handful of machines will sell one.

Rating

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Sources

• Tar, nicotine, count, price, release dates — JT Peace family
• Blend, format, nicknames, withdrawal dates, brand history — Japanese Wikipedia: ピース (たばこ)