It begins as it does every year in this season: on the first of the sunny days of March, I am woken when, with a brief tickle of warning, my nose explodes. Between bed and bathroom, I sneeze another half a dozen times; by the time I've got my hands on a piece of tissue paper, my nose is drooling and my eyes feel as if they are being buffed with sandpaper.
It begins as it does every year in this season: on the first of the sunny days of March, I am woken when, with a brief tickle of warning, my nose explodes. Between bed and bathroom, I sneeze another half a dozen times; by the time I've got my hands on a piece of tissue paper, my nose is drooling and my eyes feel as if they are being buffed with sandpaper.
I have had only one other experience like it – six years ago, when I caught a dose of the notoriously powerful tear gas used by the South Korean riot police. This is peaceful Tokyo, but for these few weeks – between the first of the spring sunshine and the passing of the cherry blossom – it takes on the look of a place under chemical and biological attack.
Outside, people wear white surgical masks; even those with perfect eyesight have wide protective spectacles. Salarymen weep into their newspapers; office ladies fumble with nose sprays and eyedrops. For this is the season of hay fever, and across Tokyo millions of people are suffering like me.
The English term hay fever hardly does justice to what Japanese call kafunsho – literally "pollen symptoms", but better thought of as Particle Plague. Cast from your mind images of delicate sniffling on freshly mown lawns – Japanese hay fever is industrial in its scale and ferocity.
Scientific studies estimate that 20 million people suffer from it; a couple of years ago, it was reckoned to be costing the country an annual $2bn (£1.4bn) in lost productivity and medical fees. Parliament even has a group dedicated to the problem, known as the Hakushon Giin Renmei (which translates literally as the Atishoo! MPs' League). But in the face of kafunsho, even the most powerful politicians in Japan are powerless.
Everyone knows the cause of the problem: the magnificent tree called the cryptomeria, or Japanese cedar. The reddish brown cryptomerias, with their rugged 100ft trunks, have a noble and venerable place in Japanese culture. Eerie, silent forests of the trees line the approaches to the oldest Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. But they are also a valuable timber tree, quick growing and versatile – and here lies the root of the problem.
In the boom years of Japan's post-war growth, millions of cryptomeria were harvested and replanted for use in construction. Then rising wages and the slowing economy made it cheaper to import foreign timber. The unharvested cryptomerias flourished and grew – of the 31,000 hectares of forest in the Tokyo metropolitan area, 22,000 are made up of cedars. And every year, at about this time, pollen is borne across the city on the spring breezes.
For some reason, probably because of traffic pollution and the absence of absorbent earth and open ground, people in cities suffer far more than those in the countryside. High summer temperatures, too, are said to have increased the pollen yield. The prescription drugs available are unreliable, working only for some people, but every pollen victim seems to have his or her own favourite brand of snake oil.
One man spends £450 a season on traditional remedies from a Chinese apothecary. A young woman swears by Japanese basil juice. Some people rely on decontamination, wearing hats outside and taking a shower and changing as soon as they come in, to prevent the clinging pollen getting into the house on hair and clothes.
The department stores have all set up aisles of ingenious "anti-pollen goods". There are eye washing baths and nose-clearing sprays. There are a dozen different kinds of face mask, one with a "unique pleated design", and another featuring a "micro-air screen filter". On the principle of the hair of the dog, there is cedar tea and cryptomeria pollen sweets, "containing real cryptomeria pollen".
As for comprehensive solutions, there is none in sight. The city of Tokyo plans to inject cedars with an experimental serum to reduce their fecundity. It will begin cutting down the mature cedars, which produce the most pollen, but this will take up to 50 years. The saddest irony is that, in a city with little greenery and vegetation, the few trees that remain are driving everybody crazy.
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