From High Times magazine, we learn that one of the world’s most popular cannabis museums – Barcelona Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum – has mounted a special exhibit focusing on Japan’s long history with the cannabis plant. Visitors are learning how ninjas in training would plant a batch of hemp and strive to jump over it every day to improve their jumping skills. As spring approached, rural households would plant four to five furrows of hemp seeds which was the family’s main source of fiber that they used to weave cloth.
“It was also an important source of income, as city merchants would buy the finer hemp fibres. This silk-like hemp was used to create the most precious clothing, from summer kimonos to samurai attire and the garments of Shinto priests. Every aspect of work involving hemp, from planting to weaving, was women’s labour. This continued throughout the Meiji era, when Japan quickly became an industrialized empire.”
– Barcelona Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum