When asked how much hemp used to grow in this region one farmer responded by saying,
“Do you see these rice fields?” pointing to the vast checkerboard of rice fields we’d been cutting and bundling, “before the war, we didn’t grow rice here, we grew hemp.”
– Poli Kondo (local farmer in Miasa-mura, Japan)
Miasa-mura, Japan
Japan’s Beautiful Hemp Village
Right outside Nagano, Japan lies a picture perfect little village with thousands of years worth of history right under foot. The roots of the town are made of Hemp…
This Japanese town is named Miasa-Mura, which literally translates to the “Beautiful Hemp Village”…
Haotoshi: Stripping the leaves with a sickle (Miasa Mura, 1944)
For at least 2000 years the people of Miasa-mura have farmed hemp. So skilled at this cultivation, the hemp from Maisa-mura was highly sought after and was called ‘yamanaka asa’ (Hemp from the Mountains) prized for its high quality…
Asakogi: pulling up by the roots , Hemp harvest (Miasa Mura, 1944)
In 1948, right after WWII when Japan was not a sovereign country but still under American occupation, the United States passed a oppressive new law…
Taima Torishimari Hô (the Cannabis Control Act)
Hoshikaeshi: After yorihoshi put the stems in the fields for 3-4 more days, then store them in barn until December (Miasa Mura, 1944)
Under this new law imposed by a occupying force, Cannabis became illegal in Japan…
Asakaki: peeling bark off the stalks (Miasa Mura, 1944)
Hemp producing villages were forced to abandon thousands of years of hemp history and culture, now forced to producing ‘legal’ crops like rice to survive…
Hemp fibre ready for shipment (Miasa Mura, 1944)
“A clear estimate of how well these strains grew in their native soils under the care of talented Japanese gardeners is difficult to arrive at. Due to this, any definitive research on Japan’s crop volume was destroyed in WW2 fire storms along with most government records.”
– The Atomic Bomb Museum
Miasa-mura, Japan
Under this foreign in forced law banning hemp, the Japanese hemp villages came together to preserve their culture and hemp varieties dating back thousands of years…
“In this area of Nagano-prefecture, the local government administers the growth of one or two closely monitored hemp fields of exactly one thousand plants grown at a different location in rotating villages (Miasa, Ogawa, Shinshushimachi, Omachi, Nakajo) in the gun (county) every year. The local authorities count the plants at the beginning, during and end of the growing season to ensure that no hemp has been taken. The hemp fiber isn’t used at all, in fact, after the plants mature and bear seeds, the seeds are harvested to maintain a fresh seed stock in the town coffers and the hemp crop is burned completely in the field.” – Gruett
Miasa-mura, Japan