Labor Econ 101 in a Forest: an anecdote from Nishikawa Forestry Area, Saitama Prefecture

After listening how difficult it was making a witch’s broom from bamboos of Niiharu, I’ve recalled the basic difficulties Japanese forests face these days. Once upon a time, forests are providers of materials for tools, foods, medicine, energy, etc. for daily life. In the 21^st century, fossil fuel replaced many things forest offered before. Heating is not by wood charcoal, but with energy generated from petro. Brooms can be made of plastics in automation. Drugs can be manufactured synthetically. Even veggies are fattened by chemical fertilizers. Not much demand remains for the forest any more. Even if people still can have an intention to utilize the forest as before, it requires specific skills and time which are both in short supply for the 21^st century City of Yokohama. No wonder in general Japanese forests are not taken care of. Neglected forests with degraded forest floors can cause massive landside with growingly stronger typhoons these days. Something must be done. But how? That’s the question.

Yet, wooden spoons are really attractive and easy to use …

New kinds of wooden dishes are available
 in Japanese department stores.

Last summer I attended a chatting event with Mr. Junji Ino’ue 井上淳治, a landlord from Han’no City 飯能市 of Saitama Prefecture 埼玉県. For generations, his family owns roughly 90ha of afforested coniferous forest in 20000ha of Nishikawa Forestry Area 西川林業, Chichibu Mountains 秩父山地. From there, several rivers pour to Tokyo Bay so that the place was once a main supplier of construction materials to Edo, aka Tokyo. He was the present-day owner of one of such forests continuing for more than 300 years. Even though, his business has very typical problems of contemporary Japanese forestry. To begin with, Japanese forestry is not much “business” nowadays. Consider a case we cut a 90 years old cedar with 45cm breast high diameter. For this bulk, usable timber volume is about 1.6m³ on average. As of summer 2018, the price of cedar timber of such size was 81600 yen, plus some amount that can be generated by selling remnants after lumbering. On the other hand the cost to cut a cedar is 16000 yen for chopping and moving the subsequent log from the site to a depo + 65000 yen to transport the log and process it to a timer in a factory = 81000 yen. i.e. Estimated profit for this operation would be from the sales of remnants, like @300yen (USD 2.5) pot stands from cross-cuttings of tips of the tree. Do you think it is an attractive business for young guys?

They are definitely not @300 yen,
 but elaborately crafted lacquerware for incense containers.
 Yet, the suppliers of wood for them cannot receive much
 despite of the efforts to provide nice material
 for such traditional art works.

Mr. Inoue and his forestry pals in Han’no City are trying many things to revive their industry under such business climate. For example, one of his projects is adding value to timbers. When a leftover of pruning is still alive, the growing cambium of the tree engulfs the remnant while the fragment of a former bough itself tries to develop as well. The cells fight each other but in the end the main cambium wins and covers the offcut part. Such competition left cracks within the trunk, which becomes obvious when people lumber the tree. For a strong construction material such fractures are huge No-No, but as decorative panels the timber can fetch a handsome price. Traditionally, top-ranked sushi-bars love walls of this interior design, which makes the demand of the panel stable at higher-end. It is definitely better than 300 yen pot stands so that foresters in Han’no are trying to supply such product reliably by applying a specific pruning technique. They also hold seminars in metropolitan Tokyo area to promote building houses with timbers from Japanese forest, not by imported materials. “In this age of global warming, we must stop irresponsible procurement of housing stuff world-wide. Besides, now in Japan, there are literally tons of building materials ready to be harvested. Why not use such resources from our backyard?”

A darling of Sushi chefs.
 Could you figure out there is a crack
 at the yellow arrow?

Will the next generation carry on such efforts of Mr. Inoue? His 20-something daughter is eager to keep on her family business, but forestry is not a job done by one girl only. More hands are needed. Not many people come to work in his premise yet. “We thought maybe we 50-somethings are a bit of intimidating for younger generations. We’ve talked with Han’no City to support young foresters to settle in the community and to preserve our tradition of forestry … Our experiment is just several years old so that we don’t know yet if it is effective. We keep our fingers crossed.” 

Making something by hands only with the materials from forests, as our ancestors did, is not at all easy. It certainly needs education and experience, now I know. Unlike manufactured plastic brooms from factories, a broom from bamboos of Niiharu requires really a labor intensive process. We have to cut a bamboo of suitable size in a forest. We then have to drug it to a working space, which require us, I tell you, carrying not so light stuff for at least several hundred meters from deep within the forest. We then have to wait for the bamboo to be dried for about 2-3 month during winter. Next, we have to shed the leaves from stems by hand, and to trim the stems and trunks for appropriately sized materials. Now, we can tackle to twine the bamboo stems for a bamboo trunk by wire, which my senior Niiharu Lovers did with helps of a vise … Making bamboo broom is not a piece of cake. Without such cumbersome manual process to create a broom, abundant supply of bamboos will easily end up as a pile of city garbage to be burned. Niiharu Citizen Forest is still better off; the place has Lovers’ Association of Niiharu Citizen Forest who engages in forest management weekly, such as thinning, mowing, planting, etc. Many Japanese forests do not have such guardians. Meanwhile, kids are busy with video games, not playing in forests. Even their science classes encourage them to sit in front of a PC “to write a code,” not to go outside and feel the real nature by themselves. They definitely do not have a chance to learn the process of making brooms from bamboos. 300 year tradition of managing forest is facing a serious problem of trained hands. The owners of the forests are struggling to lure young talents who can continue management of the forests. And Japan imports lots of timber from overseas. We don’t know, really, if this system is sustainable. Something is definitely out of sync. Don’t you think so?

If you find an environmental issues in Kanagawa Prefecture, please make a contact with Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター

657 Nanasawa, Atsugi City, 243-0121 〒243－0121　厚木市七沢657

Phone: 046-248-0323

You can send an enquiry to them by clicking the bottom line of their homepage at http://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/div/1644/