Exhibition “MJ in Japan” Opens in Spain
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Hash, Marihuana & Hemp Museum in Barcelona, the exhibition “MJ in Japan” will be open from May 2022 through February 2023.
MJ as an Important Part of Japanese Culture
The exhibition at the Spanish museum is dedicated to the unique ways cannabis has been used in Japan. Visitors will learn how people in the Land of the Rising Sun cultivated and processed MJ. Until 1912, soft cannabis fiber was highly valued in Japan and used to weave various types of clothing, from kimonos to priestly robes.
Even samurai armor was partially sewn from hemp fiber. Cannabis was also cultivated by the famous ninjas. In the spring, they would plant several cannabis bushes and jump over them daily to hone their obstacle-clearing skills. By autumn, the plants would reach up to four meters in height, and the assassins had to use poles to leap over the MJ bushes.
The poet Masaoka Shiki even dedicated a haiku to cannabis:
Warm rain in the city
Brought the scent of sunset
And ripening MJ.
Junichi Takayasu, owner of the MJ museum in the town of Nasu, Tochigi Prefecture, stated that for thousands of years, cannabis was an important part of Japanese cultural life. However, the situation changed after the country was occupied by American forces following World War II. Under pressure from the occupiers, the Japanese government banned MJ in 1948.
Upcoming Cannabis Law Reform in Japan
Japanese farmers are allowed to grow the industrial MJ variety Tochigishiro, which contains about 0.2% THC. However, due to strict regulations, only 37 businesses have received cultivation licenses. The total area of MJ crops is just about 370 hectares, so farmers cannot meet the demand for raw materials, and the local market mainly sells imported cannabis products.
The need to reform MJ legislation was first discussed in 2015, after the wife of Japan’s Prime Minister, Akie Abe, expressed her desire to revive the cannabis industry. However, she was unable to realize her plan because the authorities did not change the regulations governing the sector.
In May 2022, Japan’s Ministry of Health announced the upcoming legalization of medical MJ. The agency will develop the necessary regulations and present them to parliament in the summer. Detailed information about the decree has not yet been released, but the media has reported that officials plan to allow patients to use cannabinoid-based medicines produced abroad.