神道と大麻の神聖な関係Shinto and Cannabis: A Sacred Connection

Many readers are probably curious about the history of Shinto, Japan's own faith, and its relationship with Japanese culture, and about how it bears on the way contemporary Japanese live. This time, from a slightly different angle, I look at the deep and inseparable bond between Shinto and cannabis (大麻, taima). Please use what you learn here to visit Japanese shrines and find the traces of the days when cannabis was in use in Shinto.

Hearing “Shinto and cannabis,” you may be surprised by the relationship. But the relationship between cannabis and the Japanese in fact goes back more than 12,000 years. This shows that the ancestors of the Japanese had a cultural relationship with cannabis long before Shinto was born.

Used throughout life over a long history, cannabis was part of daily living for the Japanese and an important component of life. Shinto was born after this cultural history had developed deeply. It is a fact that Shinto was established as a religion in the modern era, but from a historical viewpoint it has a character hard to call the same as Christianity or Buddhism, which are familiar to readers. Rather than a religion, Shinto has taken shape rooted deeply in the daily life the Japanese actually lead. The actual life of the Japanese is itself the essence of Shinto. With this history as a premise, it is understandable that cannabis, indispensable to Japanese life since very long ago, was naturally taken into Shinto.

Interestingly, when you visit a shrine even today, you can find traces of the former use of cannabis in many places. The reason I must say “former” is that cannabis was strictly banned in Japan after the Second World War. Today almost no cannabis is used in shrines, and 99% use substitutes such as paper and plastic.

The traces of cannabis once used in Shinto rites are extremely varied, and here I list the representative ones. When you stop at a shrine on a trip to Japan, please look out for these. Anyone can find them easily.

1. Onusa (大幣): A tool used by shrine priests in rites (more exactly, a tool for purification). Because domestic production of cannabis fiber is now small and rare, most shrines substitute paper. The onusa is a common tool in the rites of “warding off misfortune” and “purification,” and every shrine has one. When a priest waves it, visitors are protected from calamity, and before the daily rites the “impurity” (kegare, 穢れ) is cleared away and the body, mind and place are cleansed. In fact, the first character of “onusa” was once written 大麻, the word that means cannabis in Japanese.
2. Gohei (御幣): A sacred ornament offered at a household altar or a shrine altar. This too is now substituted with paper, but cannabis fiber was once used. Gohei have been believed since ancient times to be a yorishiro (依り代), an object in which a kami dwells.
3. Cannabis and salt: In the purification of Shinto, cannabis and salt were once used as a set to cleanse body, mind and place. Even today, the Japanese scatter salt to ward off misfortune in daily life, for example at the entrance of a new home when moving. Originally this custom required not only salt but a bundle of dried cannabis leaves and stems. Even now, shrines and homes keep salt in a small dish.
4. Mike (御饌): According to the Kojiki (712), the oldest surviving book, and the Nihon Shoki (720), cannabis was originally a “sacred offering” to the gods. At Ise Grand Shrine, during important rites, mike are offered when the purification ends, and prayers are made to the kami.
5. Shimenawa (しめ縄): Now rarely used, but the shimenawa set at places such as the torii at a shrine's entrance once used cannabis fiber. Izumo Taisha, however, uses not cannabis but another plant fiber, makomo (真菰), for its shimenawa, and still does today. In festivals around the country, a kind of rite, cannabis was also used in the ropes of portable shrines.
6. Garments of priests and shrine maidens: Hardly used today, but once in general use. Now they are used only at some representative shrines such as Ise Grand Shrine and Izumo Taisha, and in important rites involving the emperor.

These are the traces of former cannabis use that can still be seen. Sadly, almost no shrine today performs rites with cannabis tools, and even where one does, there is almost no chance for ordinary people to receive such a rite. And the uses of cannabis in Shinto were not limited to these; it was used in various festivals and rituals.

As an account similar to the intake of cannabis that many readers may be interested in, it is known that there were many rites in various places in which cannabis was actually burned. People inhaled its active components, entered a state of intoxication, and held festivals in which they danced through the night.

The Engishiki (927), which records the legal system of the Heian period, also records that cannabis was widely used in court rites involving the emperor and in festivals at shrines in various places. Its use was not limited to the aristocratic rites that called down the gods; at the level of ordinary people too, it connects to Obon (お盆), Japan's representative custom of welcoming the dead. Until before the war, holding festivals by burning cannabis was thus common. Rather than the modern aim of simply making people happy, cannabis is thought to have had the power to soothe the gods and the souls of the dead.

The relationship between the emperor and cannabis is especially deep as well, and cannabis was used in many ways in important rites involving the emperor. These are partly still carried out. Cannabis thus has an importance inseparable from Shinto, and it becomes clear that neither rites nor festivals could exist without it. That is, cannabis was involved deep within the faith of the Japanese. The relationship lasted more than ten thousand years, and it declined drastically when cannabis was banned after the war.

Today only emptied forms remain and the use of cannabis is lost. Why was cannabis valued so highly in rites? I will look at that in the future. Next time, I will look at kegare, the ancient Japanese concept of the utmost importance that I raised in this article and that is unfamiliar to Western readers, at the effects of cannabis, and at the present state of cannabis as identified in Japanese.