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3 posts tagged poison
Asebo (Pieris japonica).
This plant was a favourite of those samurai clans that specialised in the techniques of assassination (ninjutsu).
Highly toxic, it can be fatal in even a small dose. It was used by assassins mixed in green tea or on rice disguised as furikake (sprinkled on top of rice).
The Bansenshukai ninja text written in 1676 refers to the use of Pieris japonica as a favourite poison of the samurai clans of the Iga region.
What are we really eating? These photos were taken one week after rice harvest and show a bright bluish oily sheen on the water of the rice fields. It is caused by a weed killer derived from isopropylamine salt - namely glyphosate. While glyphosate, it is claimed, is not poisonous on its own, other chemicals with which it is mixed to ensure distribution are indeed poisonous and easily make their way into waterways.
Glyphosate is a weed killer and the fact that it is sprayed all over the rice farms with apparently no effect on the rice makes me wonder if this rice is glyphosate resistant? Monsanto Japan back in 2002 carried out research into Matsuribare, a glyphosate resistant rice. While I know this isn’t Matsuribare rice, and Monsanto Japan (now owned by Nissan Chemicals) stopped their research, it still has me wondering what we are eating?
Glyphosate sprayer. This farmer is spraying all the weeds around his farm and along the irrigation canals with glyphosate. A great deal of the poison was spraying into the water, which travels along through Hiratsuka and off into the Pacific ocean at Shonan beach.
I see many farmers doing this each week. The amount of damage that this is causing to the environment is lost on the Japanese who for the most part couldn’t care less about nature.
One only has to look at the beaches of Japan to see that they really don’t care.
