Hemp in Japanese Culture

Essay by rizzi1983A+, May 2005

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I thought that I would provide you with some historical information which involves the US occupation of Japan and the Post WW2 abolition of Industrial Hemp.

Circa Post WW2: The Dupont's and the Cotton Cartels of the time wanted Hemp off the map, it was a matter of strategic economic importance.

"Industrial hemp is just way too much of a ubiquitous product to be grown by the common man". "It just makes too much $cents$ for the average farmer" " It would displace pulp towns and the Cotton clowns" " It would create a paradigm shift" I know Jeff hates that term, but the big boys don't like change if it doesn't fall into their pockets!!!!!!!!!!1st

Just to give your readers an idea on how well regarded Hemp was in the Japanese culture:

I'll provide you with the following:

Hemp was traditionally used by Shinto priests, including the Japanese emperor himself who acts as a kind of chief priest of Shintoism.

Several hemp fields are cultivated on Shikoku, one of the four main islands of Japan, to make ceremonial linen clothes for the Imperial family and for Shinto priests.

Hemp is also grown in some parts of Nagano prefecture by farmers with a hemp license and the fibre is used for bell ropes and noren (ritual curtains) for Shinto shrines as well as in sumo rituals.

The Hemp Control Act

Hemp cultivation came to a legal halt in the during the post W.W.II, allied-forces occupation. Allied troops lived in Japan and helped substantially to rebuild the nation battered by the destruction and poverty of wartime.

The foreign troops were certainly surprised at the abundance of hemp growing both wild and cultivated. In 1948 when American General of the Army, Douglas Macarthur and his colleagues rewrote the Japanese constitution, they included...