Will they flower this autumn？ Niiharu’s north facing slope of lilies 新治市民の森

 

Several years ago, the head of Nagaike Park of Hacioji City 長池公園, Mr. Hideshige Uchino, visited Niiharu Citizen Forest. He said the slope where Golden-rayed Lily blooms every July (; my post for July 28, 2024) was a precious place. Niiharu Forest locates at the edge of Tama Hills 多摩丘陵 which is basically a typical suburbia of Tokyo. The hills are covered by housing and business buildings with sporadic remnants of yester-centuries’ forests and farm fields. The slope of lilies in Niiharu is facing north and probably the underground water level is relatively high. Observing the vegetation, plants loving somewhat cooler conditions thrive there. Mr. Uchino said “Such environment is now rare in Tama Hills. Probably Niiharu’s slope is the only one left.” Hmmmmm … We have to protect it, you know. The place is covered by lilies, but they are not the only flowers showing off their beauty on the slope. Currently, flowers of Adenophora triphylla var. japonica is dominating the site, but if autumn comes as before, we will admire pale purple of wild Salvia japonica. If lucky, monkshood may return. And Japanese gentian should come in November … er, that is, if we can maintain the ground of the slope OK for these flowers.

Adenophora triphylla var. japonica

The thing is, Niiharu Forest is changing. I think we should use the term ‘evolving’ but I’m not sure whether the term is appropriate. Reason? Er … once the slope was a chestnut orchard. But in 2019, mega-typhoons came and destroyed old trees. The large and tall trees were down, and some poor trees were torn apart by strong winds. Until then Niiharu Lovers mowed the steep slope every August before chestnuts falling in order to collect autumn goodies easily. After the calamity, we did some mowing, but alas not much goodies from the tree. Besides, the chestnuts trees are really decaying. So, the serious mowing of the slope after flowering lilies is suspended. Then the City, the landlord, decided to redo the chestnut orchard with oak trees, and Lovers cleared the broken trees from the place. Aside from some afforestation by school kids this early summer the work for restoration of the forest is not yet started. The summer mowing is not done this summer.

Survived chestnut surrounded by grasses

It’s bad news for autumn flowers on the slope. Before, greedy Lovers mowed the place for chestnuts, which made the sun light reach to the ground and short seedlings of, say, Japanese gentian, could start vigorous photosysnthesis for blue flowering in late autumn. Yet, we still want to enjoy gentian at the beginning of winter. What to do? We Lovers chose to mow a small plot around the seedlings of such autumn flowers this summer. We pushed through tall sasa bamboos and Japanese bracken fern both of which dominate the slope, found seedlings of flowers, then cut these tall and ubiquitous grasses around the seedling, hoping it would help the babies to become beau in 2-3 months’ time. It is a delicate task, just like finding bugs in programming code … By the way, my PC Topy5 turned out to have magnetic head failure. It now really is “hospitalized” and undergoing a “surgical operation.” *sigh*

A sort of maze …

In a deadly hot August summer of 35°C temperature, the small plot mowing with concentration continued on the slope. After cutting covering vegetation, I found the soil around the seedlings is really dry. Not much rain has come this summer. Even if it comes, the tall grass prevented the rainwater reaching the ground. When the duration of rain is short, the water retained on the surface of dominating grass leaves evaporates quickly. I was alarmed.

Desiccated ground

One of my Forest Instructor pals has a day job for Kanagawa Water Supply Authority. He normally sits in front of the control panel for water distribution procured from Sagami 相模川 and Sakawa 酒匂川 Rivers. The Authority is in charge of management of Miho 三保ダム, Sagami 相模ダム, and Shiroyama 城山ダム Dams (; my posts for April 19 and 26, 2019) and operation for intake weirs from the two rivers. He knows the current condition of water supply in Kanagawa Prefecture. He said “Well, we don’t see any abnormality this year. Currently, all dams have more than 85% of water capacity. We soon will begin annual discharge from dams to prepare torrential rain of typhoons for Autumn.” I asked him if there is any special request from farmers for water supply. His reply was “Nah.”

His assessment may be correct for water source
 … this one is Yadoriki Stream … REALLY?

… He may have engaged in some PR stunt. But we at least haven’t heard any request for water saving from the authorities. On the other hand, also in a different occasion, personnel from JA Yokohama said this summer farmers in Yokohama are having hard time to irrigate their field. “You know, in such summer, casual watering does not seep into the ground. We have to hose down for hours to save our crops. It surely impacts the bottom line of the ag business.” Hmmmmmmm … I heard schools had difficult times moistening their lawn ground during summer vacations. Parents and teachers volunteered to tackle the task, but the baking sunshine of long day smirked human activity. Their lawn is brown. Meanwhile bitter melons of my garden do not get big. It needs more water. Weather forecasters predicted the record-breaking high temperature this week, already in September. Who said climate change is an imaginary thing?

Umeda River along Niiharu Forest.
Local farmers withdraw H2O from here, but …

I’m not sure if it is OK for rice paddies
dry this much in Yokohama’s August.

Niiharu’s pond is dried up.

If you find a problem in the greenery of north-half of Yokohama, please make contact with

Office for the Park Greeneries in the North
北部公園緑地事務所
Yokohama Municipal Government Green Environment Bureau
横浜市みどり創造局

Phone: 045-353-1166

FAX：045-352-3086
email: mk-hokubukoen@city.yokohama.lg.jp

Extra: Kanagawa Prefecture 2022 Chainsaw License Seminar

 

For some of you who’re interested in such things, here is the latest info for this fiscal year’s Chainsaw License Seminar in Kanagawa Prefecture, organized by Forestry and Timber Manufacturing Safety and Health Association. The schedule is for 21 and 22 of coming September at PIZZA in Hadano City. The cost is 22,000 yen. The registration deadline is August 26, but the seat is limited and in first-come first-served system. Please call 045-261-3731 first, then follow the direction for the registration process. Below is the letter Kanagawa Forest Instructor Association received from Kanagawa branch of seminar organizer. Sorry, it’s in Japanese only. Good Luck.

Roaming Bear: Wild animals near us

In May 2019, there was an alert issued by the Prefectural Office for Yadoriki Water Source Forest やどりき水源林. It was about a bear. On May 10, 2019, it was sighted feces of an Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus) and cedar trees whose barks where stripped probably by the same species, with scratches and bites. Photos were circulated among Kanagawa Forest Instructors. One photo was for a denuded cypress tree with vivid scars. Another was poops, gigantic ones, which were typical of bears. The incident was recorded very near to the admin office of Yadoriki Water Source Forest. “Come to think of it, there was a sighting of a cub in Ameyama Pass 雨山峠 last fall.” “Yes, yes.” “There is another cedar, withered due to peel-off by a bear in Ushirozawa Stream 後沢 near a warehouse.” “Indeed …” Senior instructors emailed us a notice “Please be careful. Carry precautionary bear bells in order to avoid unfortunate encounter.” Certainly. So, we are now ringing bells when we enter Yadoriki Forest. It’s, I would say, noisy. Yeah, that’s the point of bear bells. But how about bird-watching in Yadoriki? The sounds of bells disperse birds whose chirping could normally be heard.

Ring, ring, ring …

2 weeks later, when we did thinning of cypresses in Yadoriki Forest, we met another large denuding of two trees by a bear. According to my seniors, those scars showed the bear “hugged” the tree and bit off the barks in order to lick molasses. “Look. This upper part has its tooth mark, and lower than these is its scratches.” “You know, now, the season of acorns has long gone. They are hungry.” Hmmmmmm. I’ve found this site of a professional photographer pondering relations between bark stripping by bears and health of afforested places. He hypothesizes bears are good at finding trees of increased circulation in sugary syrup. A tree does so when it’s not in a good health, like we crave for junk food when we’re exhausted ... So, when bears denude trees here and there in a forest, it could be a sort of indicator about the situation of trees, he says … Yeah. We have to admit we’re late in thinning for a healthy afforested forest. Congestion could make each cypress weaker than otherwise. Bears can smell the “blood” due to our neglect … Meanwhile, we hear many news about encounters between humans and wild animals. In Yamaguchi Prefecture 山口県, near Hiroshima, bears come to congested town nowadays (news from here). One evening late May this year in Iwakuni City 岩国市, a lady came home and found an adult bear of 1 m tall tried to open the door of her front entrance. (Yap, the city is where the US Marine stations.) Woooooooooooow. Something is happening in Japanese forests. I myself feel more close-encounters with wild animals these days, comparing with my kid-days decades ago … Or, is it simply because of my ignorance?

It’s a bite, I guess.

Scratches.
 I think s/he was so excited to have syrup and
 attacked the tree with strong claws intensely.

In Yadoriki, one day, we found a drowning Japanese field mouse (Apodemus speciosus) in a toilet. Oh dear … poor guy (?). One thing for sure is, we humans have entered deep in nature and made marks of our existence, like modern toilets. From animals’ point of view, they lived there for centuries, and we are new-comers disrupting their lives. One morning that Yadoriki’s toilet became a shelter for a horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum). When we found it, we were quite excited. “Wow, what is it?” “It’s large!” “Camera, camera, camera!” The animal must have slept deep, but was got up by commotion below. It bent backwards as much as possible (“Wow, how flexible!”) and opened its mouth many times. (“Cute!”) We could not hear any screech, but the animal must have emitted human-inaudible ultrasound, saying “Hey, I’m sleeping! What are you guys doing there? What time you think is it now!?” Oh so self-centered humans.

Oh so poor mouse …

The bat. It really looked cute …

One spring day, I had a chance to enter deep in Yadoriki Forest to the direction of a ridge way from Yadoriki Community 寄 to Mt. Nabewari 鍋割山 (ASL 1272.4m). On our way, about ASL 800m point, there is a relatively horizontal space that has two wallows. It’s very strange to find such thing away from the valley … The place is strangely flat after very steep climbing, and has a sort of peculiar atmosphere. We were looking for colonies of wild Calanthe discolor our senior forest instructors found 2 years ago, and crisscrossing the space. The smell of animal is intense although we cannot see any large moving creature. Because of this smell, or not, I could feel indications of mammals filling the space. Perhaps, they were watching us meandering in their domain. “Huh, that rude two-legged creatures searching something in our bathroom!” The place is in less than one hour climb from the forestry road. It’s amazing to find such wild realm so near from human places. It would just be we are too arrogant and ignorant not to be conscious of our neighbor next door in a forest … So sorry for our cluelessness.

A wallow.
 Though there was no water then, the soil was still wet.

A footprint of deer? Serow? Boar?

This is what we were looking for.

Then, the other day, when we did our normal forestry activities in Niiharu, an animal jumped out in front of us, and ran up high on a tree next to the trekking road. “What!?” “What is it?” “Cat?” We took a photo and did a research. We concluded it was a masked palm civet (Paguma larvata). The species is good at climbing up trees, and so it jumped around the trees in Niiharu. Japanese have not found fossils for Masked palm civets in our territory. Also, the spread of this animal is not continuous in the archipelago. On the other hand, their Mitochondria DNA is identical with 2 groups of civet native to Taiwan. Ministry of Environment considers they are probably foreign species came to Japan relatively recently. One theory says they were brought in during the 19^th century in order to harvest fur. The City of Yokohama recognizes several damages they can cause for houses and farms. Mountain of their poops in a garret with horrible smells. Bitten fruits scattered around in a commercial orchard. … Here is another vista of our naïveté with wild animals. They are always very near from us. Oh, yeah.

Niiharu’s masked palm civet

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/

Trying: a bit of introduction for national policy to the forests in Japan

We are here. 70% of Japanese territory is covered by forest. World’s Forests Map by ESA.

So, in Japanese forests, landlords are struggling to keep their property healthy and sustainable. Institutionally, Japanese government, local and national, also attempts to help as this is the age of COP and SDGs. According to a professor for Tokyo University this February, “The budget for taking care of the forests is allocated abundantly. Problem is, Japanese forests cannot digest such generous offerings due to man-power problems.” Hmmmmmmmmm. At least, we are trying. Let me tell you the story.

Until (roughly) the 1980s, Japanese policy regarding forests was for forestry business. Due to population expansion, successive wars and economic growth, there was a massive demand for woods for energy (until coal, then oil, dominated the economy) and for construction. Especially after 1952, Japanese market for woods was overheated, which made increase in prices for wood products far outpaced the general inflation. Japanese government scrambled to tackle the issue. They gave generous subsidies for landlords to log and plant seedlings massively for cedars and cypresses that could grow straight (i.e. suitable as construction materials) and relatively quick. In addition, in 1964, the year for the first Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, the government completely liberalized imports of woods and wood products to satisfy the demand. It seems to me they optimistically thought once one-off monetary incentive let them afforest, private business would take care of the forest for 50 years until the next crop is ready. They also did not expect during the subsequent 50 years wages in cities became easily available and far better for rural kids who once stayed for their birth-forest and took care of the ancestral land, but now moved to Tokyo for, first factory, and, now sales jobs. Worse, the government underestimated the power of comparative advantage imported woods had: they were far cheaper even with global transportation costs. By the time Tokyo will host the 2^nd Olympics and Paralympics Game of 2020, Japanese forestry has been decimated. Mr. Junji Ino’ue 井上淳治 of Nishikawa Forestry Area 西川林業 (my post last week 😉) self-deprecatingly said, “You see, we Japanese foresters count our heads about 45 thousand as of 2015. The estimated number of Japanese serow was about 100 thousand in the early 1980s when crop damage by them could be ignored. Now, many fields next to forests all over Japan regularly report destruction by the animal, and they are legally protected as a ‘special natural monument.’ Who’s in the danger of extinction!?”

By 1971, Japanese forestry business rapidly became rare, even with liberal subsidy. Thank God, before that time bold mountain was scarce in Japan, which was good. Roughly half of Japanese forests were now of afforested coniferous trees. But Japanese forests that had lost the battle to cheap imports could not expect proper management any more. No mowing, thinning, or pruning was done. At the turn of the century, cedar and cypress seedlings planted packed turned into congested forests of lanky trees. Not enough sunshine reached to the forest floor. It made the ground below the canopy bared. Instead, rain dropped directly to the soil without cushions of grasses. When it poured in steep Japanese mountains, the rain immediately transformed into rapid streams that washed away the top soil. The entire forests were unstable. Landslides and devastation of check dams showed up in dangerous frequency for this earthquake-prone archipelago. Meanwhile, people started reacting positively to “environmentally conscientious” messages. After 1992 UNFCCC and 1997 COP3 in Kyoto, opinion polls showed people got to think of forests not as places for industrial materials, but for CO2 sink, recreational space, and clean air. Till then, Japanese policy for forests was a part of national industrial policy. Responding to the changes in circumstances, during the 1990s the government changed the direction for nation’s forest management radically. First, in 1998, they quit central commando mentality for forests, and transferred the role of planning and supervision to local governments. In 2001, strict regulation over forestry activity, defined by Americans during 1945-1952 occupation era, was abolished and the 3^rd parties were allowed to plan and execute forestry based on business contract with landlords. It opened the gate for volunteer organizations to engage in serious forest management activities. Local and national governments, together with landlords, were expected to devise long-term management plans for forests in each locale to achieve land conservation, cohabitation of forests and human society, and sustainable forestry. In 2008, mowing, thinning, and pruning were defined as a part of methodology to maximize CO2 absorption by forests … That’s something when we recall the start was simple “chop to build cities for business.”

Actually, history of Lovers Association of Niiharu Citizen Forest 新治市民の森 reflects such changes in national policy. Niiharu Citizen Forest was opened in March 2000 as the 22^nd Citizen Forest of the City of Yokohama. Our Niiharu Forest had almost unique characteristics. From the beginning, it was the largest Citizen Forest in Yokohama. It means lots of landlords existed (and exist even now) for the forest. Until then, management of each Citizen Forest of Yokohama was almost exclusively done by landlords and their very close friends. The only exception was Araizawa Citizen Forest 荒井沢市民の森 opened in May 1998, where landlords could not find enough helping hands from their acquaintances and consequently asked their neighborhood associations to mobilize the people. Niiharu Forest with lots of landlords would not have had such problem so that it might have been possible for them to follow so-far-standard approach to exclude volunteers. Even though, the founding “fathers” and “mothers” of Niiharu Citizen Forest did not do that. The first pals of Lovers Association were neighbors many of whom happened to move in Yokohama from far and found the magic of Niiharu Forest in their new neighborhood. They were really “volunteers.” That was impossible if the law General MacArthur gave effective monopoly of forestry activity to landlords. Then, after the 2001 change in the law for forestry planning, Niiharu Lovers Association had lots of study sessions and created “Conservation and Management Plan for Niiharu Citizen Forest 新治市民の森管理保全計画” that is consisted of detailed project managements plans with zoning. (More to Niiharu’s 20 years in my later post.) In 2015 Niiharu Forest was designated as one of the 500 “Important Satochi-Satoyama to Maintain Biodiversity in Japan” by the Ministry of Environment. Indeed Niiharu Forest now protects several endangered species in the middle of uber-urban Megalopolis Tokyo. Japanese policy change after UNFCCC is achieving its goals so far.

Parking for visitors to Niiharu Citizen Forest is here!

To some extent, Kanagawa Prefecture has a leg-up to respond national policy changes. For one thing, we are a part of Tokyo area where lots of possible volunteers live. Historically, mountains and forests of Kanagawa have been a research field for geologists, civil engineers of water and mountains, botanists, zoologists, and dendrologists in many universities of the capital city. In Kanagawa Prefecture, it was not so hard not only to make planning for the forests but also for timely execution of it. Next week, I introduce you 50 Year Plan of Kanagawa Prefecture for our forests.

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/

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/

A Chainsaw Training Session

In Japan, forestry is still the deadliest where the population density of killed-workers is the highest in all the business in Japan. It has been so for centuries, and it includes the incidences involving chainsaws. After the World War II, the Americans who occupied Japan for a while introduced a massive usage of chainsaws to deal with the reconstruction activities. Forestry that had the highest death rate as an occupation added to its to-do list to tackle the hazard arising from chainsaws. Our grandpas thought there must have been something institutional to deal with it. It is one of such arrangement for us using chainsaws attending a training session governmentally recognized in order to obtain legally endorsed certificate as a proof of completing the training.

We are studying. 

Chainsaws are powerful machine. Ferrari F142VS has 9000rpm maximum engine speed. A small chainsaw operates with an engine of 12000rpm, and we have to hold it with our arms. Inevitably, it could cause health problems. The wave length of a vibration a motor of a chainsaw can destroy human blood vessel when we use the machine for a sustained length of time. Say, a busy forester operated his chainsaw 8 hours a day. He would surely (1) be exhausted, which could end up a fatal incident with a saw, and (2) have strangely white hands at the end of the day. It’s called a vibration syndrome, caused by the destruction of numerous blood vessels of hands. If a blood vessel was cut off in the middle, oxygen and nutrition cannot reach to the parts beyond the torn-down point. The cells are practically suffocated due to the damage in blood circulation, and stay with the trauma for the rest of one’s life. Japanese legal arrangement limits hours of operation with chainsaws mainly this hazard in mind. For a person to receive any governmental support due to injuries involving chainsaws, s/he must have the certificate to prove the attendance of the training course informing this vibration syndrome and the other aspects of activities with chainsaws. Well, this is a free country. No Big Brother watches us in remote and deep mountain forests. But at least if a person carries a document for operating a chainsaw, s/he must have received a sufficient training to know such dangers. A grown-up rational adult won’t do stupid things with a chainsaw, if the person knows the thing. That’s the thought.

Our lecture was done indoors,

under a spectacularly fine weather (Jeez …)

and the views of Mt. Fuji and Hakone … 

Hence, there is an officially endorsed training course for people who operate chainsaws and expect to receive medical cares with national health insurances and the other welfare benefits in case an accident happens. The curriculum of the course is also legally defined as 2 days’ session at minimum. Those lecturers are certified people who can inform the trainees medical pitfalls the machine can bring, the methodology of safe forestry with chainsaws, and the mechanics of the machine. Why mechanics? You may think. In order to operate 12000rpm engine by our hands, the tool must be treated in a proper way as its engineering design requires. To avoid incidences, we should hold the handles in an optimal way, and know when such-a-such button to be pushed. Moreover, mechanical knowledge of a machine can be used for appropriate maintenance. After one operation of cutting trees, the saw is covered by wood chips inside out. The teeth are also worn off. Without setting the order again, next time we start the engine, the saw can even catch fire. Faded teeth force the operator to handle the machine in a wrong way that can cause serious, or fatal, incident. Informing users the mechanics of chainsaws is very important.

Mechanisms explained 

How to sharpen the teeth 

2 day training session was consisted of lectures about the health issues in the usage of the machine, the safe procedures of cutting trees, like how to create sockets, back cuts, etc., the mechanics of chainsaws, AND detailed stories of serious incidences, normally death, involving chainsaws. “This veteran cut corners of safe operation. Then he lost the control of the chainsaw for just a second. The teeth cut the artery run through his left leg. He died before an ambulance arrived ...” A story among many horrors. We then had practice sessions of sharpening the teeth, cleaning a machine, and actual cutting of logs about 50cm of diameter. I’ve already did activities with chainsaws in Niiharu so that this part was OK for me. Though, the lecturer said, “Relax! You don’t have to strain your arms’ muscle that much. (Big grin)” … OK, I was nervous, I guess.

Model demonstrations for holding a chainsaw 

This is an advanced technique!

Could you see the lecturer does this

without a kickback of the saw?

Don’t try unless you are a seasoned pro. 

New things for me were about the laws and institutional background for chainsaw usage, and health issues, horror stories included. My take is, (1) after the 2nd operation that created 8 holes in my wrist bone, I must have a mini-break with the chainsaw. I have to wait my bone grows to fill the cavity and can sustain itself with the vibration of the machine. Patient! And (2) Be careful regardless in a forest. Yeah. By the training, I now have a governmentally endorsed official certificate to operate a chainsaw. BUT, it’s far better not to meet the opportunity for the documentation to be useful. Breaking a tiny bone alone is such a fuss. Receiving injury with chainsaw? That’s the world of “Friday the 13th.” I think I could regard now the activities in a forest from another angle, with a concrete image of danger. Come to think of it, that is the point why there are laws and training sessions for chainsaw operators in Japan. Naomi is a good citizen. 😇 

Please be careful in a forest with a chainsaw that can cut off your leg and bring death to you. Safe forest life, yeah.

I’ve learned

when we hold the machine at the right point of a handle,

creating a socket is far easier.

Hmmmmmmmmm. 

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/