Was Psychoactive Cannabis Used In Shinto Rituals?
Cannabis Japonica: Shinto and the Spirit of Hemp (part 2)
Cannabis has been an integral part of Shinto, the indigenous spiritual practice of Japan, since its very beginnings. But was the plant ever used for psychoactive purposes?
It is likely that Cannabis was brought to Japan by the Jomon people — the hunter-gatherers who originated Shinto — over 10,000 years ago. The Japanese islands where the Jomon settled were abundant in nuts and other wild foodstuffs at the time, so there was no real need for them to plunge into agriculture.
Hemp (Cannabis Sativa) was one of the few crops they did cultivate.
Archaeological remains, and traditional practices that have survived in remote parts of Japan, indicate that hemp was grown for fibre rather than food. It is this use that is (pun intended) woven throughout the history and rituals of Shinto.
The altered states of shamanism
Most prehistoric belief systems are shamanic in nature. ‘Shamanic’ is a broad and necessarily vague definition. As modern humans, we can only speculate as to exactly what our ancestors were up to when they painted mushrooms on the walls of caves in Algeria, strapped deer antlers to their heads in England, or buried their dead with baskets of psychoactive cannabis flowers in China.
One of the defining factors of shamanism, however, is communication with unseen, otherworldly beings. This usually takes place in a trance or altered state.
There are many ways to achieve such a state. The group of plants known as entheogens numbers species from all over the world, including cannabis. The evidence for their prehistoric use is great.
Some authors, most notably Terence McKenna in his book Plants of the Gods, have speculated that psychoactive plants directly caused the development of self-awareness and even language in early humans. In 2005 American psychopharmacologist Ronald K. Siegal proposed that achieving altered states was the ‘fourth drive’ (after food, sleep, and sex) for humans (and even some types of animals!) in his book Intoxication.
There is certainly plenty of precedent and purpose for the adoption of psychoactive substances in early shamanic cultures.
But did the earliest practitioners of Shinto incorporate cannabis into their rituals, as part of their shamanic roots? To answer this question, we must first look at whether they even had access to it.
Did psychoactive cannabis grow in ancient Japan?
Japan is a long string of islands which stretches from latitude 24°N to 46°N. This covers a range of climates, all of which could theoretically support psychoactive cannabis varieties.
The 24°N line demarcates the border between Pakistan and India, where many fine strains originate. The Chinese city of Turpan, where psychoactive cannabis was found in a 2,700-year-old shamanic grave, is 43°N.
In the north, the large island of Hokkaido is known for its historic hemp production. There is even a strain known as Hokkaido Hemp which shows some auto-flowering tendencies — a sure sign that it’s adapted to harsh climates. But in the south, which enjoys a subtropical climate, any strains with psychoactive tendencies would have flourished, creating significant THC levels.
The high humidity could have produced phenotypes similar to those from Thailand, with small, widely-spaced fluffy buds, long internodal gaps, and no need to flower automatically. But would the baseline genetic capability be there?
Both studies and observed growth patterns point to the cannabis that was introduced to Japan by early humans as originating in East Asia (believed to be the birthplace of psychoactive cannabis) rather than Russia or Siberia, which produced non-psychoactive ruderalis.
A 1973 survey published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime contains the results of a survey of the THC, CBN and CBD content of hemp from all parts of Japan. The report does not specify whether this was feral or farmed hemp, but it was likely to be the former, thanks to the near-eradication of the Japanese hemp industry by the US following World War Two.
Hemp from the Hokkaido region contained 3.9% THC. Hemp from Tochigi, another area famed for historic hemp production, contained 3.4% THC. These ratings are actually too high to qualify the samples as ‘hemp’ at all, when judged by modern limits for ‘industrial hemp’ — a mere 0.3% in most countries.
If the plants that were tested are the direct descendants of those grown by the Jomon, then it is reasonable to assume that the ancestral plants could have been used for psychoactive purposes.
Preserving Japan’s cannabis history
Tochigi, located a hundred miles north of Tokyo, is also home to Japan’s only museum dedicated to cannabis: Taima Hakubutsukan. Its founder Takayasu Junichi is passionate about Japan’s long history with the plant.
His aim is to share that now-suppressed history with a population for whom the plant has been demonised by misinformation. In a 2014 article in the Asia-Pacific Journal, Mr Takayasu spoke knowledgeably on many aspects of hemp in Japanese society, but even he expressed that he wasn’t sure whether it was ever smoked in general, let alone as part of Shinto.
The same article speculates that cannabis could have been ‘the drug of the masses’ since rice, from which sake is made, was controlled by the rich upper classes.
There is actually a parallel example of this in Dutch history. When tobacco was introduced in the 17th century, smoking it was the preserve of the wealthy. The lower classes, seeking to emulate the new fashion, turned to dried hemp flowers — the cheap and plentiful by-product of the thriving hemp industry which employed many of them. This era in Japan was the Edo Period, during which hemp was the most common fibre plant of the working classes.
The use of hemp flowers as a tobacco substitute in the Netherlands is well-established and even illustrated in Old Master paintings of farmers smoking in taverns.
However, there is no equivalent in Japanese history to prove irrefutably that smoking hemp was ever a practice, let alone a common one.
Smoking — status symbol or inappropriate habit?
Tobacco was introduced into Japan in the late 16th century. Rather than becoming a status symbol, it was soon banned by the government. This general anti-smoking stance may relate directly back to Shinto.
Shinto expert David Chart, with whom I have corresponded for both parts of this article, was once again kind enough to explain:
‘Fire, and burning things, plays a much smaller role in Shinto than in many traditions. For the most sacred night-time ceremonies, all the fires were (and are) extinguished, and, while burning, they were only used for light and heat, rather than playing a central role in the ceremonies. (Again, there are exceptions, but the ones that I know of are derived from Buddhist practices.) Similarly, the use of incense is extremely rare in Shinto these days, and I think that is historically true as well.’
There are references to a traditional Japanese festival involving burning cannabis leaves in the oft-cited History of Religions Part 1 by George Foot Moore, published in 1914. However, this occurred as part of a festival with strong Buddhist elements, not Shinto; in fact, Moore states that ‘Dances of a peculiar kind are a conspicuous feature of the celebration, which is evidently an old Japanese custom; the Buddhist elements are adscititious [added later]’.
David continues,
‘So, the absence of fire in a central role in most Shinto rituals may well have meant that burning cannabis simply did not occur to people as something that it was appropriate to integrate. On the other hand, sacred music and dance are a central part of ritual, and so seeking trances in rhythm would have seemed like a natural development.’
Unlikely, but possible
However, there is enough circumstantial evidence (e.g., the presence of THC in hemp, the shamanic roots of Shinto, its tendency to be deeply localised and therefore idiosyncratic) for cannabis experts Robert C. Clarke and Mike D. Merlin to postulate that psychoactive cannabis use was indeed part of Shinto, but was suppressed and eventually abandoned once Confucianism reached Japan in the late 3rd century CE. David doesn’t quite rule out this possibility:
‘I would not be at all surprised to discover a local tradition in Shinto that did use psychoactive cannabis in the past, but I would be astonished if they still did, or if it was more than one or two isolated examples. I would have expected to come across references in that case, and I haven’t. By way of comparison, I know that there were Shinto matsuri that involved actual sex. Again, these were local traditions, never mainstream, and are *probably* not practised these days, but they have left traces in the literature that I have come across. But there’s nothing like that for cannabis.’
The idea that Shinto priests never made use of the psychoactive properties of their crop even though they could have done is fascinating. Recalling the exploration of the nature of Shinto from the first part of this article, there is another possibility to consider.
Perhaps the deeply integrated, almost matter-of-fact nature of Shinto meant that there was never any need to enter an altered state in order to converse with kami.
Unlike the majority of (mostly shamanic) contemporary practices, Shinto holds the lines of communication open to everyone at any time. To attract the attention of ancestors and spirits one need only clap one’s hands, ring a bell, and be silent — after, of course, being purified with hemp.
Cannabis Japonica can be seen at the Hemp Gallery of Amsterdam’s Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum from June 23rd 2023 to sometime in 2024 (officially until March 17th, but it has been extended by popular demand) and is co-curated by Yuko Ogino, the co-founder of Project Japan.
Thanks:
I would like to express my deep gratitude to David Chart of Mimusubi: Reflections on Shinto for his correspondence and kind assistance on the subject of hemp and purification. Any errors of understanding in the text are entirely the responsibility of the author.
Many thanks also to the inimitable Robert C. Clarke, who permitted me to both pick his brains and use his photographs for this article.
Sources:
Japan: A Country Study, edited by Ronald E. Dolan and Robert L. Worden
Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany by Robert C. Clark and Mike D. Merlin
Technological Analysis of the World’s Earliest Shamanic Costume by Aimée Little et al.
Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge by Terence McKenna
Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution by José Manuel Rodríguez Arce and Michael James Winkelman
Hallucinogenic drugs and plants in psychotherapy and shamanism by R. Metzner
History of Religions by George Foot Moore
The Secret History of Cannabis in Japan by Jon Mitchell
Tobacco in Japan: The Awa Ikeda Tobacco Museum from Japan Experience
HIHA (Hokkaido Industrial Hemp Association)
Japan-United States Co-operation on Drug Abuse Research, 1969–1972 from UNDOC
A Spanish version of this article originally appeared in issue 230 of Cannabis magazine in July 2023.
