Iwashima

Iwashima
ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later
⛶
Geography
Country	Japan
Province/State	Gunma Prefecture
Coordinates	36.53, 138.79
Landscape
Area	250 km²
Terrain	Upland fields along the Agatsuma River and its gorge, in the hills of the Agatsuma district; approximately the town of Higashiagatsuma
Growing history
Documentation
Appellations	0
Accessions	0
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Iwashima is a cannabis growing area in the town of Higashiagatsuma, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, on the Agatsuma River. Its hemp, Iwashima hemp (Iwashima asa, 岩島麻), was known across the country as fibre of the highest quality. Hemp is thought to have been grown in the Agatsuma district by the 16th century, and it was a living there until the 1970s.^{: 30, 35} The Iwashima Hemp Preservation Society, based in the Mishima district of Iwashima, is the only body in Gunma Prefecture licensed to grow cannabis, and keeps the crop and its fibre-making technique alive.^: 30

Hemp in the Agatsuma district

No document fixes when hemp growing began in Agatsuma. The Kazawa-ki mentions hemp stalks (ogara) in its account of the fall of Iwabitsu Castle, and some hemp is thought to have been produced by the 16th century. In the mid-17th century, under the Sanada, hemp could be traded freely, and hemp fibre (tsuna-asa) delivered as tax was set against the money due on upland fields. From the mid-Edo period merchants of the market towns shipped hemp to Edo and to Etchū, and in the 19th century brokers such as the Katagai of Iwashita and the Sugaya of Gōbara sent it to Edo, Etchū and Echigo. Inscriptions of 1846 and 1864 carved on the cliff at Tarusawa in the Agatsuma gorge name the hemp buyers' guild of the district as the chief donors to a pass road cut through the gorge.^: 30–31

The village gazetteer of Agatsuma District of 1877 gives the value of hemp produced by each village, and calls Mishima, now the Mishima district of Higashiagatsuma, the true home of the crop and the first in the district. Mishima produced 6,321 kan of hemp, against 2,500 at Ōkashiwagi and 1,500 at Hayashi. The best grades went to Etchū and Echigo, to be woven into the fine cloths Echigo jōfu and Echigo chijimi; the lower grades went to Tokyo for fishing nets, bird nets, sandal thongs and sandal soles.^{: 31, 36}

A cooperative set up at Mishima in 1904 began selling hemp in 1911 and in 1912 fixed six grades, from Agatsuma-nishiki at the top to Momiji for hemp below grade. From 1918 it took members from the whole of Agatsuma District, close to 600 of them, and the district's hemp reached its peak in the Taishō and early Shōwa years. In 1929 there were six wholesalers and nine brokers in Iwashima alone.^{: 31, 33} In the Edo period Iwashima's fibre was called Jōshū kita-asa, and before the Second World War it was sold for weaving in Niigata, Toyama and Nara and for fishing nets in Mie, Chiba, Shizuoka, Miyagi and Shimane; the finest was used for high-grade cloth, fishing line and bowstrings.

The crop

Iwashima hemp was grown and sold as seima, fibre scraped clean of its outer bark, which is valued for its colour, lustre and strength in weaving and in bowstrings. Its stalks, about 190 cm long, are longer than those of other districts.^{: 31, 34} The growers' saying "first the stalk, second the nedo, third the scraping" names the three conditions of good hemp: well-grown stalks, careful fermentation in the nedo pit, and skilled scraping of the fibre.^: 31

Elders who grew hemp in the early Shōwa years told Fujino Asako that seed was sown by hand on 10 April and the crop pulled up in late July or early August, about 100 days later. The stalks were boiled the same day and dried for ten days, and the fibre was prepared from late August into October. Hemp fields came round every other year, in a rotation with buckwheat and wheat, and neighbours laid out their fields together on one side of the village road one year and on the other side the next, since a lone field suffered from wind and birds. Women stripped the stalks and men scraped the fibre, the reverse of the division of work in Tochigi.^: 32–34

The end of commercial growing

Hemp came under state control in 1939, and when imports of Manila hemp stopped in the Pacific War the government urged more hemp to be grown; the Iwashima elders recalled the war years as busy ones. The ban on cannabis growing in 1945, its lifting in 1947 and the licence system of the Cannabis Control Act of 1948 did not, by their account, harm Iwashima's growing. From about 1955 synthetic fibres took its market: when fishing nets turned to nylon, half the hemp sent to the cooperative went unsold, and many growers turned to konjac. The cooperative's processing works closed in 1960, and the last household preparing fibre stopped in 1979.^: 34–35

Preservation

A hemp preservation council was formed in 1966 and became the Iwashima Hemp Preservation Society in the late 1970s, in 1977 by the Board of Education's account and in 1979 by Fujino's.^: 35 Gunma Prefecture recognised the society's technique as its first Selected Conservation Technique in 1992. When hemp was needed for the Daijōsai of 1990, a rite traditionally supplied by the Miki family of Tokushima, growing there had died out, and the society went to Tokushima with seed and taught the growing and preparation of the crop.^: 35 In 2014 the society had 15 members and grew hemp on a field kept to preserve the technique, supplying the Imperial Household Agency and the shrine association. It grows and prepares a crop every year.^: 35

Accessions

No accessions documented yet.

Recent news

No recent news items.

See also

• Japan
• Kinasa
• Tochigi