In early April, an Okinawa man in his late 20s visited activist Yusuke Sawada's office in western Tokyo. He had just finished serving his latest prison term, one of many that have kept him behind bars for most of the past decade, depriving him of the formative years of his life.
The man, released April 4, shared the events that led to his incarcerations, telling Sawada and his group a story all too familiar.
Like many other visitors to Cannabist, the Okinawan was repeatedly locked up for possessing marijuana — sometimes less than half a gram, which would be considered negligible in other developed countries.