From time to time the issue of marijuana comes up on the Shinto mailing list, because of the use of hemp for sacred ropes and clothing. Before cultivation of the plant was made illegal following pressure by the American Occupation forces, hemp was widespread but whether it was used as a drug seems doubtful. There are scholarly accounts that claim there’s no record or evidence of such use and that anyway the type of plant growing in Japan is not the right sort.
However, I came across a site by an enthusiast who’s very well informed, and he has some striking observations, including first-hand experience of cannabis plants being burnt at a Shinto festival. Here is the link along with the accompanying photograph…
http://www.japanhemp.org/stories/story001.htm
Shinto priests carrying cannabis plants in Shikoku (1990)
Wikipedia has this to say on the subject: “In Japan, hemp was historically used as paper and a fiber crop. There is archaeological evidence cannabis was used for clothing and the seeds were eaten in Japan back to the Jōmon period (10,000 to 300 BCE). Many kimono designs portray hemp, or asa (Japanese: 麻), as a beautiful plant. In 1948, marijuana was restricted as a narcotic drug. The ban on marijuana imposed by the United States authorities was alien to Japanese culture, as the drug had never been widely used in Japan before. Though these laws against marijuana are some of the world’s strictest, allowing five years imprisonment for possession, they exempt hemp growers whose crop is used to make robes for Buddhist monks and loincloths for sumo wrestlers.”
For a discussion of marijuana in Japanese history and of the use of cannabis leaves in Shinto ceremonies, see this link…. http://www.japanhemp.org/en/thc.htm. But be warned! An Englishman in Kyoto has recently been arrested for growing plants in his apartment without a license and is facing a lengthy spell in gaol. I doubt that he could plead he was doing so on religious grounds…
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For a piece on Japan’s 2nd Annual Hemp Festival, please click here.
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