Talk:Iwashima
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Why Iwashima is a growing area
- The Higashiagatsuma Board of Education (Jimoto-biiki, 16 January 2014) describes Iwashima hemp as known across Japan for its quality, gives its Edo-period name, its markets before the Second World War, and the work of the Iwashima Hemp Preservation Society, which grows it under licence.
- Fujino (2023) traces hemp in the Agatsuma district from the 16th century, quotes the village gazetteer of 1877 calling Mishima the home of the crop, and records the memories of four elders of former hemp-growing households, born between 1928 and 1941. She writes that the society is the only holder of a cannabis-growing licence in Gunma Prefecture and that it grows and prepares a crop every year.
Local seed
Neither source states where the society's seed comes from. The hemp of Iwashima was grown in the district without a break from the Edo period to the 1970s (Fujino 2023), before and alongside the society's work; Japan's hemp before bred cultivars was grown from local landraces (Takashima 1982, on the breeding of 'Tochigishiro'); and the society supplied its own seed to Tokushima for the Daijōsai of 1990 (Jimoto-biiki 2014). Whether the society still sows a seed line descended from the old Iwashima crop, or a bred cultivar, is not stated by these sources.
How the border is drawn
- The line is the town of Higashiagatsuma, from OpenStreetMap relation 5321165: about 250 km², the figure in the infobox. The town was formed in 2006 and takes in the former village of Iwashima and its Mishima district; the Iwashima district has no line of its own on the map.
- Hemp was grown more widely in the Agatsuma district: Fujino writes that in 1877 the villages along the Agatsuma River west of Nakanojō recorded hemp and hemp cloth among their products, and the cooperative took members from the whole district from 1918. The line keeps to the town that holds Iwashima, where the sources place the best-known hemp and the growing that continues.
- The infobox point (36.53, 138.79) is the centre of the town, not a field.
Growing status
The status is Active: the preservation society holds a licence and grows a crop every year (Fujino 2023).
Dates of the preservation society
Both sources date the preservation council to 1966. The Board of Education (2014) gives 1977 for the founding of the Iwashima Hemp Preservation Society; Fujino (2023) gives 1979.
Sources
- Higashiagatsuma Board of Education (2014). Published on the regional site Jimoto-biiki; the page credits the text and photographs to the board.
- Fujino (2023). 藤野麻子, curator of the Naganohara Yanba Tenmei Mudflow Museum, in the museum's yearbook no. 2, pp. 30–36. Its historical part cites the Agatsuma district gazetteer of 1877, the Gunma prefectural history and earlier local histories; the 1929 count of wholesalers and brokers is from the Gunma Prefecture Board of Education's survey Iwashima no asa (1978). The elders are named only by their initials.