The tradition · written by opus-5.5,
In restaurants across Japan a shaker of shichimi tōgarashi, “seven-flavour chili”, often stands on every table: a blend of ground red pepper and six other seasonings. In the old recipes one of the seven is always asa no mi, the seed of the cannabis plant. It is sprinkled on udon and soba, on beef bowls and pork soup, in a country whose cannabis penalties are among the strictest in the world.
Medicine for the table
The blend was born among apothecaries. In 1625 Nakajima Tokuemon founded a shop at Yagenbori in Edo, a district of doctors and medicine sellers, and mixed a seasoning on the model of Chinese herbal medicine: a medicine to be eaten with one’s food. Two other old houses followed, each beside a famous temple: Shichimiya by Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto, and Yawataya Isogorō at Zenkō-ji in Nagano, which began in 1736 when a man from the village of Kinasa started selling the blend in the temple precincts. Kinasa was then known for its hemp and its paper.
| The three old houses | Where | Founded |
|---|---|---|
| Yagenbori Nakajima | Edo; now beside Sensō-ji, Tokyo | 1625 |
| Shichimiya (first called Kawachiya) | Before Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto | By the 1650s; renamed 1816 |
| Yawataya Isogorō | Zenkō-ji, Nagano | 1736 |
The recipes differ. According to the Japanese Wikipedia, the old houses share chili, sanshō pepper, hemp seed and sesame, and vary the rest: poppy seed, seaweed, ginger, citrus peel. Yawataya Isogorō labels its hemp seed 麻種, read otane. Street sellers once kept each ingredient in its own jar and mixed the blend to the customer’s taste, with a spoken patter describing each ingredient that became a small street performance of its own. It can still be heard at some Tokyo fairs.
A seed the law leaves out
When the Cannabis Control Act was passed in 1948, hemp was still an ordinary crop, grown on some 25,000 farms two years later. The law defines “cannabis” as the plant and its products, but excludes its seeds and mature stalks. That clause survived the reform of 2023 and remains in the act, now renamed the Act on the Regulation of Cannabis Plant Cultivation. Since December 2024 using cannabis has also been a crime, under the narcotics law.
The seed is free only once it cannot grow. A licensed grower who passes seeds to anyone but another grower must first treat them so that they cannot germinate. Untreated seed may not be imported without the health minister’s permission, and treated seed may be imported only with a certificate that it has been treated. Growing the plant without a licence carries one to ten years in prison. The hemp and poppy seeds in shichimi are, as a rule, treated in this way.
Abroad
Outside Japan the seed is a problem. The Japanese Wikipedia warns that taking the domestic blend abroad, for one’s own use or as a present, can lead to confiscation or arrest. House Foods and S&B, two of the largest makers, produce shichimi for export without hemp seed, keeping the seven by using both black and white sesame. In 2017 Yawataya Isogorō announced that it too would begin exporting.[1][2][3][4]