Tochigi
More actions
| Tochigi | |
|---|---|
| Yashū | |
| ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Japan |
| Province/State | Tochigi Prefecture |
| Coordinates | 36.69, 139.82 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 6,400 km² |
| Terrain | Plain in the south and east, rising to the Ashio and Nikkō mountains in the west and north, where the hemp district of Kanuma lies; approximately Tochigi Prefecture |
| Growing history | |
| Earlier names | Shimotsuke |
| Dated accessions | 1901 |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 3 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Tochigi is a cannabis growing area in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, the former province of Shimotsuke. Its hemp, grown for fibre, is called Yashū hemp (Yashū asa, 野州麻).[1] In the early Shōwa years about half of Japan's hemp acreage lay in Tochigi.[2] Its growers sow 'Tochigishiro', a cultivar low in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) that the prefecture's agricultural experiment station bred from a Tochigi landrace and a low-THC strain from Kyushu, and applied to register in 1982.[3] In 2012 it was the only cultivar grown in Tochigi, which had 5.3 hectares of hemp, over 90 per cent of the area grown in Japan.[4]: 16
The Kanuma hemp district
Hemp was grown from early times in the country between Kanuma and the town of Tochigi, and Kanuma was the market where it was collected.[5] In the Edo period Kanuma was a post town on the Nikkō Reiheishi road and a collecting place for hemp from the farming villages around it.[6] Kuchi-Awano, a village at the meeting of the Omoi and Awano rivers in the hills west of Kanuma, was known for its hemp before the Second World War; after the war hemp fell away there and konjac took its place.[7]
Japan's hemp growing collapsed from the late 1950s with the spread of synthetic fibres, and the mountain country of the north-west of the prefecture remained as a producing district, for its own technique of preparing the fibre (seima).[3]: 47 Today more than 90 per cent of Japan's hemp is grown in the Nagano district of Kanuma, whose hemp and hemp culture the city's Awano museum of history and folklore exhibits.[8] Kanuma grows 'Tochigishiro' and leads the country in both the quantity and the quality of its hemp.[9]
A sheet gathered at Imaichi, now part of Nikkō, in September 1901, Anon. s.n., Imaichi (1901), is catalogued at the University of Colorado with the place "Imaichi, cult. prov. Shimotsuke".[10]
Yashū hemp
In the Edo period Shimotsuke was one of the provinces whose hemp went into fishing nets, and one of those whose hemp went into cloth and mosquito nets. National hemp acreage grew from about 14,000 hectares in the late 1880s to about 25,000 hectares around 1897 and then declined, as machine-spun cotton replaced hemp in fishing nets and everyday clothing. Growing became concentrated in Tochigi, which held about half the national acreage in the early Shōwa years. The Sekai Daihyakka encyclopedia writes that state policy aimed at self-sufficiency in raw materials for the military sustained it, and that Tochigi's hemp held on in civilian uses where other fibres were poor substitutes: the core cord of geta straps, the warp thread of tatami mats and the body of fishing nets.[2] A hemp-spinning mill, Shimotsuke Asa Bōseki, later Teikoku Sen'i, began work in Kanuma in 1890, and the town's hemp industry prospered into the early Shōwa years.[5]
The United States Department of Agriculture imported Tochigi hemp seed through the Yokohama Nursery Company in 1915 (NPG-JPN-TOC-0019150001), entered as "Tochigi production; slender tall variety",[11] and again in 1916 (NPG-JPN-TOC-0019160001). With the second lot S. Iida wrote that seed for sowing was scarce, since farmers grew only for their own needs, and that nets made of Tochigi hemp were said to last three years, against less than half as long for nets of hemp grown elsewhere. Lyster H. Dewey of the Bureau of Plant Industry called it the best fibre hemp in Japan, grown most extensively in Tochigi, with slender tall stalks and a fibre somewhat finer than the average Kentucky hemp.[12]
The Asa eigyō-zu, a folding album of 22 sheets handed down in the family of the Sadoya, Kanuma's leading hemp wholesaler until it closed in the 1960s, shows Yashū hemp from ploughing to harvest and shipping in 29 scenes.[13] The tools of Yashū hemp production held by the Tochigi Prefectural Museum are a designated Important Tangible Folk Cultural Property of Japan.[8]
Landraces and 'Tochigishiro'
Japan's hemp was grown from local landraces, each fairly mixed. To obtain a pure line, the Tochigi Agricultural Experiment Station selected the landrace of Nanma village in Kamitsuga District, now Nanma in Kanuma, from 1918 to 1928, by a method adapted from ear-to-row selection in maize. The result was 'Tochigi Shiken No. 1', with pale green seedling leaves, green stems and leaves, and grey-white to grey-yellow fibre of good quality, and with as much tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA) as the landraces.[3]: 48
In 1967 Itsuo Nishioka of the faculty of pharmacy of Kyushu University found plants with almost no THCA and much cannabidiolic acid (CBDA) in a landrace of Shiroishi, in Saga Prefecture, and named the line the CBDA strain; in 1971 he found a similar group in a landrace from Ōyama, in Ōita Prefecture. Grown in Tochigi, the CBDA strain gave poorer fibre than the local landrace then in use, 'Minami-Oshihara No. 1', and its seed was too large for the growers' seed drills. From 1974 the station selected within the CBDA strain, and in 1977 it crossed a selected line with 'Tochigi Shiken No. 1'. In the second generation it kept the plants of the shiroki type with no THCA, and in 1982 it applied to register the result as 'Tochigishiro'. In trials from 1979 to 1981 'Tochigishiro' matched or exceeded the landrace in yield and fibre quality, and its seed suited the drills. The station warned that seed would still have to be raised in isolation, to keep the cultivar from crossing with the landraces.[3]: 47–53
In 2012 the prefecture had 17 hemp farms and 21 licensed growers, a count that takes in those who multiply seed at the station and for the growers' council, and its harvest of 1.6 tonnes was about 70 per cent of the national total, used for shrine ropes (shimenawa), the ropes of the yokozuna ceremonial apron and bowstrings. All the farms belong to the Tochigi Hemp Promotion Council, which multiplies seed bought from the station and may not pass it to anyone outside its membership.[4]: 16
Accessions
| Accession ID | Name | Collected |
|---|---|---|
| Anon. s.n., Imaichi (1901) | Makino Herbarium specimen 120388, Imaichi, Tochigi, Japan (1901) | |
| NPG-JPN-TOC-0019150001 | Tochigi General Population 1915 | |
| NPG-JPN-TOC-0019160001 | Tochigi Hemp General Population 1916 |
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References
- ↑ 橋本寿夫 (2016). 野州麻 その伝統，無毒大麻「とちぎしろ」の開発，そして現状について [Yashū hemp: its tradition, the development of the non-toxic hemp 'Tochigishiro', and its present state]. Farumashia (in 日本語). 52 (9): 837–839. doi:10.14894/faruawpsj.52.9_837.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 平野綏. アサ (麻) [Hemp]. Kaitei shinban Sekai daihyakka jiten (in 日本語). Heibonsha. Retrieved 29 October 2026 – via Kotobank.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Takashima, Daisuke (1982). 無毒アサ「とちぎしろ」の育成について [A new hemp variety "Tochigishiro"] (PDF). Bulletin of the Tochigi Agricultural Experiment Station (in 日本語) (28): 47–54.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Hokkaido Industrial Hemp Feasibility Committee (March 2014). 北海道における産業用大麻の作物としての可能性 報告書 [Report on the potential of industrial hemp as a crop in Hokkaido] (PDF) (Report) (in 日本語). Hokkaido Government. Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 村上雅康. 鹿沼 [Kanuma]. Kaitei shinban Sekai daihyakka jiten (in 日本語). Heibonsha. Retrieved 29 October 2026 – via Kotobank.
- ↑ 村上雅康. 鹿沼（市） [Kanuma (city)]. Nihon daihyakka zensho (Nipponica) (in 日本語). Shogakukan. Retrieved 29 October 2026 – via Kotobank.
- ↑ 千葉立也. 粟野 [Awano]. Kaitei shinban Sekai daihyakka jiten (in 日本語). Heibonsha. Retrieved 29 October 2026 – via Kotobank.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Kanuma City (17 April 2025). 粟野歴史民俗資料館 [Awano Museum of History and Folklore]. Kanuma City (in 日本語). Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ Kanuma City (23 April 2026). 鹿沼市の農産物 [Agricultural products of Kanuma]. Kanuma City (in 日本語). Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence 4435944348: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ Bureau of Plant Industry (1918). Inventory of seeds and plants imported by the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction during the period from January 1 to March 31, 1915 (PDF) (Report). Washington: United States Department of Agriculture. p. 18. No. 42.
- ↑ Bureau of Plant Industry (1919). Inventory of seeds and plants imported by the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction during the period from January 1 to March 31, 1916 (PDF) (Report). Washington: United States Department of Agriculture. p. 59. No. 46.
- ↑ Kanuma City. 麻栄業図 [Asa eigyō-zu]. Kanuma City (in 日本語). Retrieved 29 October 2026.