In Yadoriki Water Source Forest やどりき水源林, we have a hidden and beautiful “artefact” explaining why we need 50 Year Plan for Forest Regeneration, and Forest Environment Tax 森林環境税. It’s several colonies of oriental paperbush (Edgeworthia Chrysantha), or Mitsumata in Japanese. You would say, “Hey, they are plants, not ‘artefacts’.” Oh, yeah. They are artefacts, objects by humans of cultural and historical interest. Let me tell you their story this week.
Oriental paperbush is not
endemic species of Japan. Their origin is somewhere in Himalayas and southern
China. When they first came to Japan is not known. But at least several ancient
poems in Manyoshu 万葉集, compiled in 759CE, mention them so that they could
have been well-known already by the 8th century. The plant is
deciduous shrub of Thymelaeaceae
family, and grows in a peculiar way: its brunch always becomes a trident. So
when we count how many nodes for forks a tree has, we can deduce the age of the
tree. In any case, it’s not a long-living bush. Average lifespan of an oriental
paperbush in Japan is max 5-6 years. Then, a succession of tridents dies and a new
shoot comes out. Because of spreading tridents, an old and wild oriental
paperbush looks like a half-ball. The tallests are about 2m high in Yadoriki. At
the tip of tridents they have yellow flowers from mid-March to mid-April,
before green leaf buds are coming out. Moreover, they have subtle but noble
scent. In deep forest of still cold Tanzawa Mountains 丹沢, yellow half-balls covering slopes with
wafting sweet aroma is categorically stunning. That’s the reason why they
appear in ancient love songs, like
Don’t cry, my love.It can’t be long before we’ll be together again,like flowers of oriental paperbushescoming out first in early spring.Let us hope nothing worse would happentill then …
春されば まず三枝（さきくさ）の 幸（さき）くあれば 後にも逢む な恋ひそ吾妹
柿本人麻呂
 |
| Yellow half balls |
I guess if they were just moderately sized good-looking imported tree with noble aroma, they won’t colonize slopes of Tanzawa. In Tanzawa, one of the most spectacular colonies of the plant is in the area ASL 800m along a route to Mt. Hinokiboramaru (檜洞丸 ASL 1601m) from West Tanzawa Visitor Center 西丹沢ビジターセンター. I tell you that’s really in a deep mountain ... Yadoriki’s largest colony of oriental paperbush is in ASL 600-700m where 2008 and 2009 Forests of Growing reside. (Map here.) To visit there, you have to cross rapid Yadoriki Stream 寄沢 by turning to the left departing from a standard trekking route to the peak of Mt. Nabewari (鍋割山 ASL 1272m) via Ameyama Pass 雨山峠 (approx. ASL1100m). Even the regular route from Yadoriki Forest to Mt. Nabewari can become a stage of accidents. A guy went missing about 6 months ago around the Pass, and police and rescuers have not found a trace of him yet … Last November a hiker had a near miss with a bear cub in the vicinity of paperbushes. An angry mother bear could come out any time. Please don’t think crossing Yadoriki Stream lightly. Having said that, if you come on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:00 and 13:00 from March to November at the entrance of Yadoriki Water Source Forest, we Kanagawa Forest Instructors are ready to guide you to the forest of oriental paperbush with a mobile bridge over the torrent. (Welcome!) In any case, it’s rather wild places for poetry loving aristocrats to plant exotic trees with dreamy eyes for their flowery lovers. (er, well, background info: Japanese aristocrats of the ancient times seldom ventured out from the capital city Kyoto 京都. They were ultimate city dwellers. You just flip through a novel or poetry of the time and understand their urban life style.) Why are foreign paperbushes thriving in such places of Tanzawa?
 |
| Mitsumata. They don’t have petals. Look-a-like is their calyces |
Shrubs of Thymelaeaceae family have very strong fibers. Among them, Diplomorpha sikokiana and Edgeworthia Chrysantha (= oriental paperbush) are used for paper making in Japan for possibly more than 1000 years. It is said that oriental paperbush came to the archipelago with paper making technology. Paper made of Diplomorpha sikokiana was very popular among noble ladies around the turn of the 1st millennium. It is fine and lustrous, i.e.suitable for love letters sent to noblemen. There is a catch. Cultivating Diplomorpha sikokiana is very difficult, if not impossible. Moreover, Diplomorpha sikokiana needs moderate climate to grow. They cannot come further northeast from Shizuoka Prefecture 静岡県. In contrast, foreign-born oriental paperbush is tougher. Unlike Diplomorpha sikokiana, Edgeworthia Chrysantha can be easily propagated by cutting in chilly mountainous areas. Though it’s not shiny as papers of Diplomorpha sikokiana, paper made of oriental paperbush can record writings clearly. Bonus: manuscripts made of Mitsumata last for centuries. It’s very suitable for governmental records and studies to be written. By the 16th century when cultural supremacy of Kyoto was gone and Japan became more diverse regionally, papers made of oriental paperbush were common among warlords to document official business in their territory. There remain artifacts, public records of territorial management written on papers of Mitsumata, in cold mountainous Yamanashi Prefecture 山梨. By the 17th century, with abundant supply of water from Fujikawa River 富士川 and of oriental paperbush cultivated or otherwise, the basin of Fujigawa River running from Nagano 長野 to Shizuoka via Yamanashi became the main region for paper industry in Japan. We just open a map for Kanagwa Prefecture, and find our west neighbors are Yamanashi and Shizuoka Prefectures. The historical region for paper industry is right there beyond Mt. Fuji 富士山. Climatically speaking, the condition in Tanzawa and Hakone is not much different from mountains in Yamanashi or Shizuoka …
In 1871, Japanese government decided to print paper money to be circulated nation-wide. Whenever and wherever, one of the problems of government about paper money is to stop counterfeit. First, they asked companies in Germany and then in the US to manufacture Japanese money by the latest western technology and to ship them to the Far East. European technology for massive printing was studied with intesnsity. In addition, Japanese mandarins in the late 19th century noticed traditional Japanese paper made of oriental paperbush could stand many tricks they wanted to equip. In 1879, papers made of Mitsumata were started to be employed for Japanese bills. In 1887 Japan began printing money by ourselves domestically. The first factory for manufacturing paper money was in Ohji town 王子, now in North Ward of Tokyo. It was destroyed by Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. The replacement was built in 1931 at the place where the current Tokyo Factory of the National Printing Bureau stands. It was already a time of Japanese militaristic adventure … pressures on national budget and inflationary policy … In 1942, a far larger factory for bill-making started to operate in a place right next to Sakawa River 酒匂川 with the enough water supply. It was the beginning of Odawara Factory 小田原工場 of the Bureau which had the largest paper mill to manufacture paper for Japanese bills. Next year, the Shizuoka Factory 静岡工場 followed. Both of the new factories were right next to the traditional producing center for oriental paperbush. Odawara Factory in Kanagawa Prefecture now is the only place where papers for Bank of Japan Notes are manufactured.
 |
| Odawara
Factory has a museum for the process of money bill manufacturing. RSVP from here. Needless to say, all the process of making money is “top national secret.” Those who guide you in the site won’t reply your question if they think the topic tricky to be frank. Diplomacy, please. |
I’m not certain yet if Tanzawa had an established production area for oriental paperbush before Japanese government began printing money. One thing for sure was, by the time Odawara Factory was open with for the National Printing Bureau, western Tanzawa, around the present-day Lake Tanzawa 丹沢湖 and Yadoriki, did a very good business of supplying Mitsumata to the Bureau. Though, it had a hidden problem … Yap. Cultivating paperbush is easy. They multiply by simple cutting and planting. Making product deliverable to the National Bureau was, and IS, a different story. It is a very labor intensive procedure. Left to its own devices, oriental paperbush spreads their brunches like a dome which is not a good shape for processing. So, farmers cram the cuttings in a bunch for one hole, and cut lanky tree of 3-4 years old before they extend their another tridents to all directions. Planting and harvesting is done by human hands in steep slopes of mountains. Next, their leggy logs are manually steamed and peeled their outer skin. Finally, the remaining inner whitish fibers are washed by clean rapid water, like of Yadoriki Stream, and dried for the National Bureau where their paper mill treats them chemically. With large population relatively near the capital city, the villages in western Tanzawa were good place to do all that. However, when World War II vacuumed all the labor force from the villages, their ability to comply such production requirement dramatically reduced. Furthermore, after 1945 rapid economic development pulled out the people from villages for jobs in cities. Mitsumata industry in western Tanzawa disappeared. The same thing happened all over Japan. Domestic supply for oriental paperbush for bank notes could not respond to the demand. Around 1950, Japanese government started to import materials for Japanese bills. Although it is a top national secret the composition of the paper for money, it is said that the current Japanese bills are made of more than 90% with manila pulp from the Philippines and fibers of Edgeworthia Chrysantha imported from Nepal and China. Yeah, that’s where the plant originated some 2 millennium ago. It’s fair, I guess.
 |
| The
left is fibers of oriental paperbush. The right is manila pulp. |
As of 2005, the suppliers of domestic Mitsumata for the National Bureau were agricultural cooperatives from Shimane 島根, Okayama 岡山, Kochi 高知, Tokushima 徳島, Ehime 愛媛, and Yamaguchi 山口 Prefectures. With rapid aging and depopulation of rural Japan, in 2016 only Okayama, Tokushima and Shimane remain contracting with the Bureau for Mitsumata delivery. What happened for the abandoned oriental paperbushes in the slopes of Tanzawa? They are in the end resilient immigrants. They escaped the yoke of staffed planting, and spread over the deep mountains, probably recalling the Himalayas where their ancestors lived. And so, beautiful yellow domes dotting western Tanzawa every early spring are an artifact with noble scent. They were once money tree, but now one of the results of neglected forests in Japan. Some argue it is a serious problem for national security relying so much on foreign supply of the material with respect to money bill. In this age of bit coins for fiat money, let me see if their assertion has a merit to consider. One anecdote. After April 2015 Nepal earthquake, the delivery of fibers of Edgeworthia Chrysantha stopped completely from Nepal. The National Bureau scrambled to secure the ingredients. One of the former production areas in mountains of Kyoto called the Bureau to invite a visitor from the Bureau asking to resurrect the cultivation of oriental paperbushes. Who knows? The money raised from the new Forest Environment Tax may be used to promote Mitsumata cultivation. In 50 years’ time, yellow half balls of Tanzawa may change the meaning of being an artifact of “money tree” to “neglected forest.” And farms of lanky paperbushes could be found in the communities on the foot of Tanzawa mountains. What would the regeneration of forests bring in 50 years’ time?
By the way, on March 14,
2020, Kanagawa Forest Instructors will host an annual event to visit the fully
bloomed colonies of Edgeworthia
Chrysantha in Yadoriki Water Source Forest. RSVP by email to
k-inst0981@friend.ocn.ne.jp.Please come. 😄
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/
No comments:
Post a Comment