We're JHIRA Members

JHIRA Members are scientists, investors, entrepreneurs, and industry personnel who have direct ties with the hemp industry in Japan. We are dedicated to highlighting economically relevant yet presently marginalized Japanese strategies that may contribute to a future where valuable human-plant relationships are returned to their central roles.

Dedicated JHIRA Members for A Sustainable Future

Adam Lobel

Co-Founder & Senior Researcher

Representative Director, Kumano Shindo GIA. Concurrently, Research Fellow, Institute for Future Engineering.

UC Berkeley, BA, Religious Studies. Musashi Institute of Technology (renamed Tokyo City University), MS, Environmental and Information Studies. Independent research in hemp at Inter-University for Japanese Language Studies.

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Git Skoglund

Co-Founder &
Textile Historian

Textile historian from Sweden who has studied hemp since the early 1990s.

Published cultural articles, scientific reports and a book about hemp textiles and plant textile fiber identifications.

Robert C. Clarke

Co-founder & Research Director

Entire professional career and much of his personal life devoted to studying the Cannabis plant and human-cannabis relationships.

“The Botany and Ecology of Cannabis”, Pods Press, 1977; “Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany”, University of California Press, 2016.

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Shan Zeng

Co-Founder & Research Specialist

One of the world’s leading authorities on shimenawa, the braided hemp fibers that are hung horizontally in Shinto shrines and other locations, which delineate a separation between the sacred and profane.

Japan Hemp International Research Association