After spending some time in Japan, I started to find is strange that imagery of suspicious looking leafs seemed to be found everywhere. I saw them In logotypes, as decoration in shopwindows and even in the prepackaged food at the local supermarket.
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The main reason I found this strange was because of the information about Japanese drug laws i got from Kansai Gaidai and the Japanese embassy in Sweden before i came here, which suggested that drugs are not looked light upon in Japan, arrests like this one also shows how serious drug use is looked upon here, if someone would even be arrested for such a small quantity in USA or Europe, it would most likely not lead to an article in the newspapers.
The Cannabis leaf is, besides somewhat of an icon to stoners worldwide, also strongly connected to Reggae music, I think that for some people the leaf might even be more of a symbol for reggae than for drugs, even if there also is a strong connection between all three. I have seen several small stores here that among the souvenirs and knick-knacks they are selling have Reggae/Cannabis themed lighters, T-shirts and many other things.
On one of my train rides from Hirakata to Osaka, I saw a very professional looking middle-aged woman, wearing a business dress and overall giving a very serious impression. I happened to notice that the wallpaper on her cellphone was a green, yellow and red colored flag with a big Cannabis leaf on it.
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Apartment building in Hirakata
It was not until I saw this sign that I realized that the leafs in some cases might be much more innocent than the look. At first I just thought that there had been some kind of mistake, that the Cannabis leaf had been mistaken for a maple leaf.
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After some research, I found out that, in some cases the leaf is in fact that of the Japanese maple, which looks very different from the maple found in Europe. I have yet to see the actual tree and leafs in real life, but as you can see on the picture below, the different leafs are very similar, and In simplified images like the one above there might be no way to see what kind of leaf it is.
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I think this is a good example of how things might not always be what they seem to be at a first glance, how things might be interpreted differently depending on who you are, where you are from and what you know.
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I might be better of not using this coincase I bought in Miyajima once i get back home, as stated above, maple leafs look different where I come from and I am afraid that people might do the same assumptions I first did, which might make me look bad.
Interesting post, especially at this time. You investigate this issue very well. Of course there are a lot of pot leaf logos in japan, as well as Playboy Bunny logos, etc. The Japanese seem to take these things and apply their own cultural logic to them. So an old lady with a pot leaf logo on her jacket is probably not a stoner and a high school girl with regulation socks sporting the Playboy Bunny isn't necessarily a centerfold girl... But it is amusing for those of us with such strong meanings associated with these symbols to see them used differently. This serves to show that globalization is not homogeneous.
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