The Smoke of the Boundary in Mushishi
Ginko is a Mushi Master who respects the natural order and preaches that Mushi are not evil, just primal life forms. So why does he constantly smoke 'Mushi-repelling' tobacco, and doesn't this contradict his philosophy of coexistence?
Mushishi is a masterpiece highly revered on Douban for its philosophical depth, and Ginko's smoking habit is central to its core thesis about the boundaries of life.
Mushi are the most basic, primordial building blocks of life, existing closest to the "River of Light" (Kouki). Humans, with their complex emotions and physical bodies, exist at the far, dense end of the evolutionary spectrum. When a Mushi harms a human, it is rarely out of malice; it is usually just existing, like a fire accidentally burning a moth that flies too close.
Ginko suffers from a rare condition where his life force is unusually "light," making him a walking magnet for Mushi. The tobacco he smokes is not a pesticide, and it doesn't kill the Mushi. Instead, the smoke creates a localized, artificial barrier of "heaviness." By inhaling the smoke, Ginko artificially pushes his biological frequency back toward the dense, human end of the spectrum.
He smokes not to destroy nature, but to maintain the boundary between the primal and the civilized. If he didn't smoke, his mere presence would accidentally draw swarms of Mushi, which would result in them being destroyed by humans or dying from overexposure to his heavy life force. The tobacco is an act of deep, tragic respect: Ginko uses it to ensure he doesn't accidentally destroy the very creatures he has dedicated his life to understanding, simply by existing near them.