Acting like Very Hungry Caterpillars: mulberries in the forests of Yokohama

The Empress of Japan, Empress Masako, was a career diplomat and an econometrist, before she got married with the then-crown prince. Her father was also a career diplomat. She spent her younger years abroad, like in Moscow, Geneva and NY. She was not a type engaging in Japanese traditional agriculture. Even though, now she’s in charge of nurturing the most traditional silkworms, called Koishimaru 小石丸. These hungry caterpillars produce thinner silk threads with characteristic twist. They can make exquisite silk robes of noble luster. Taking care of silkworms in Imperial Palace is the official duty of Empress. Why? The tradition was started in 1871 by Empress Shoken 昭憲皇太后. At that time, Japan was struggling to be counted as an “honorable nation” in Euro-American centered international politics. As always for achieving such ambition, money was important. Japan did not have the latest technology of steam engine or the like but could produce silk. Very luckily for Japan, during the late 19th century European silk industry was devasted by pebrine that annihilated European silkworms. In addition, China, the birth country of silk industry some 5000 years ago, was in a serious mess due to colonial invasion of Westerners. It made China difficult to produce enough silk for export. Japanese government saw the opportunity. They took industrial policy of silk industry for trade. And so, the Empress herself was showing the “example” of economic development to the nation. It was a jackpot. Around 1900, Japan became the number 1 exporter of silk in the world. It brought handsome profit. With the money from silkworms, Japan built large military and plunged into the World War II. Until 1941, the year of “Remember Peral Harbor,” silk was the number one earner of hard currency for Japan.

Yokohama, the largest international port of Japan since the 1850 until the 1970s (currently, the largest is the Port of Tokyo), played a crucial role for silk trade. The main silk producing regions in Japan were in South Tohoku, North Kanto, Yamanashi, and Nagano. The product was agglomerated in the City of Hachioji and carried to the Port of Yokohama. From here, Japanese silk was sold globally. The road, the present-day National Route 16, between Hachioji and Yokohama became Japanese Silk Road. It runs along the southwest edge of Tama Hills 多摩丘陵 where Niiharu Citizen Forest 新治市民の森 locates. The area has lots of small hills and streams that were too small and not so good for competitive rice paddies or veggie field. But mulberries for silkworms grew well. People lived between the two cities watched the traffic of impressive wealth at the front row, and inevitably thought “Hey, why not nurturing silkworms that can bring fortune for me?” There was a craze at that time in Hachioji, Sagamihara, Kawasaki, Machida, and Yokohama to be sericultural farmer. From the late 19th centuries to the first half of the 20th centuries, the scenery along the road between Hachioji and Yokohama was of mulberry orchards for silk.

Tourists’ heavy part of the Port of Yokohama, 21^st century

After the World War II, silk lost its shine to synthetic fabrics like nylon. Japanese silk never became the protagonist for Japanese economic growth after 1945. Many farmers in Yokohama along Japanese Silk Road abandoned their silkworm business, moved on to another produce, or sold their land for urban development. Yet still the greenery in Yokohama’s north forests has lots of mulberry trees that originated from the abandoned orchards some 70 years ago. I tell you, mulberries are not “wall flowers.” From late May to June, they bear lots of sweet berries loved by city birds. They bombarded the forests by mulberry seeds in their poop. Mulberries are multiplying in our city.

The large portion of Niiharu Forest was once the orchard of mulberries. After 1945, the landlords replanted their property with confers hoping they would be sold at good price as construction materials, instead of loss-making mulberries. Then lamber trade was liberalized in the 1960s and landlords’ expectation was never materialized. Meanwhile between cypresses and cedars left-over mulberries poked their head. When we mow the undergrowth of Niiharu Forest, it was like, “Hey, remove these young mulberries, here, here, and there.” Now the established mulberries along the trekking route have lots of fruits without fail every year. We Lovers of Niiharu are secretly grading the taste of berries from each tree. The mulberries along the route X are aplenty, but the sweetness and the size are so-so. One tree at the point Y is old, but bear large and sweet berries every year … (I won’t tell you exactly where these points are 😉.) But our seasonal talks of mulberries ended always like “Though, not many visitors to our forest care them, don’t you think?” “Yeah. The city rats simply do not know it, do they?” “Huh, Japan had economic development because of the tree, didn’t we?” “Indeed …” Then, something has happened with COVID-19.

May 2021 is the bumper year for mulberries, and visitors to Niiharu Forest. Under the State of Emergency in Tokyo, families, couples, group of friends, etc. come to the forest with picnic blankets and lunches. Mulberries started to have ripen at around the middle of the month. I don’t know how it was initiated exactly, but we Lovers met many families had merry snack time under fecund mulberry trees. “Dad, could you pick that one for me?” “OK, yeah, those branches receiving more sunshine may have more ripen fruits …” “I cannot reach to that high!” They had sweet sticky fingers and lips with blue-tinted purple colors. They looked happy. Some even come to us to inquire “Which tree is the sweetest?” Wow. They enjoy mulberries like very hungry caterpillars for mulberry leaves.

Last weekend I asked one of my senior volunteers. “Will they continue to visit Niiharu after COVID?” He was rather cynical. “Well, once Tokyo Disney Land resumes their business for full-capacity, and shopping centers serve dinner till 23:00 as before, they won’t come to Niiharu.” Ah … Maybe. But the office for Empress keeps the sericulture tradition long-after the silk stopped being the main export of Japan. Some of the visitors today might return Niiharu Forest in future May for sweet mulberries. The other could remember forest nearby is a precious place of relaxing picnic. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

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

Office for the Park Greeneries in the North
北部公園緑地事務所
Yokohama Municipal Government Creative Environment Policy Bureau
横浜市環境創造局
Phone: 045-311-2016
FAX: 045-316-8420

Niiharu Administrative Office / Satoyama Exchange Center
新治管理事務所・里山交流センター
Phone: 045-931-4947
Fax: 045-937-0898
Email: info@niiharu.jp
http://www.niiharu.jp/

Money Tree: forest regeneration and oriental paperbush in Yadoriki Water Source Forest

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 8^th 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 …

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

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 1^st 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 16^th 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 17^th 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 19^th 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/

The Tree Awakens: Japanese Forestry for post-globalization

True. As of 2015, Japan still satisfies 67% of our appetite for woods by imports. But they once dominated 81% of the market (; the domestic bottom was 2002). Something is happening. What is it?

A history of Japanese wood procurement, in 1000 cubic meters.
From the data 木材需給表 of Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery of Japan.

The start was the change in 1987. Till 1986, Japan bought more raw material logs from overseas and processed them domestically in factories built along the coasts. Then in 1987, the stats for imports of wood products surpassed the timbers. According to the import-export stats from the Ministry of Finance, in 1988 Japan imported logs from 50 countries of every continent, except Antarctica. About 62% of them were from non-EU, non-North American, not-Aussie or not-Kiwi countries. Nonetheless they earned only 56% of Japanese payment for imported logs. It was the time the global development issues and deforestation entered the mainstream of world discussion. People started to talk about climate change and the importance of forests. Simply deforesting for money became rather barbaric both for sellers and buyers.  Meanwhile, in the middle of the 1980s EC, Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand had already switched their strategy for processed woods, and did better business. They showed to the rest of the world how to sell the trees. Everybody upgraded their forestry to value-added, and began legislating the rules for cutting trees and setting export tariffs. The world price for wood set off to going up. Then in the 1990s, China started their miracle years which still continues to this day at least for woods trade. Their way to use woods is definitely different from us. We Japanese are fussy about the quality of woods. Chinese people do not care much, since their main usage of woods is to package their industrial products, such as freight boxes and stuffing. Whatever the quality of timber, the world price of woods stays in a not-so-cheap range because of Chinese demand.

Are Japanese imports Timbers or products?
From the statistics of Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan, in 1000 cubic meters.

On the other hand, around the same year of 1987, Japan began to have fewer and fewer human babies. By the turn of the century, people really understood the high-growth era was over both for economy and population. Forestry is a long-term business. Everybody agreed that the business model of mass deforestation and afforestation, and importing tons of woods for current consumption, would never be profitable again. In addition, the neglected forests have limited capacity to produce high-quality timbers. The demand for domestic wood shrunk, which caused a dramatic drop of domestic price for woods. Chance! Though they are still pricy compared to the imports, could there be any way of industrial resurrection? The Cabinet decided 2011 Master Plan for Forest and Forestry which was the first for the 21^st century Japanese forestry. The policy defined Japanese forestry as a part of environmental issues that should also support rural economy where the effects of declining population concentrate. The Plan has established a legal foundation for subsidies and other public supports to the industry. Japan is after all an archipelago covered with forests. Reducing “wood mileage” makes sense. The Plan sets the national target for domestic wood supply to cover 50% of the Japanese market by 2020, the Olympic Year, until when the construction business is expected to thrive.

The history of Japanese population (measured by the vertical axis), from e-statdata of Japan.
The numbers after 2016 are a projection subject to the assumption
for 2010 mortality and birth rates continuing forever.

The USD price of timber per cubic meter since 1990.
Data from UNECE: domestic market average in Europe and US/Canada, not adjusted for inflation.
Japanese price is the average of cedar and cypress logs per cubic meter, from 2015 White Paperfor Japanese Forestry, adjusted by annual USD/Yen FX (BOJ data), but not for inflation.

There is another tail-wind for Japanese forestry to be resuscitated. Technology. The recent advancement in construction materials with processed wood makes it possible to use below grade timbers for earthquake-tolerant pillars and walls, while the debris is minimum for waste. Before, drying processed woods was done by heating them up with lots of imported fossil fuels in factories built near the ports of international trade. Now drying temperature is optimized in high-tech factories, such as biodryer, to make the usage of fuels minimum without creating burn-marks on products. Although once dead industry lost the skills of foresters, the new technology has started to create a new ways to do the business. The efficiency in cutting timbers could be improved by using CAD and robots. The machines manage to cut out wood parts for mass-housing construction, which enables carpenters to build a full-spec house in less than a month. It can stimulate more domestic demand for wood products. Especially after the Great Tohoku Earthquake, the prefectures with large forests in Kyushu Island and Hokkaido began observing constructions of large wood factories in depopulated villages deep within the forests, where they can easily have logs from nearby. Then, earnest while endeavor for renewable energy turned their eyes to wood chips that can be supplied even from the worst-quality logs found in neglected forests. Power stations for biofuels are sprouting here and there, including devastated Tohoku Region. In 2014, domestic supply of chips for biofuels surpassed the imports. Mr. Masaaki Nagai of Kanagawa Prefecture told us forest instructor trainees that these days people compete for biofuel chips in all over Japan. There is a rumor in 2017 the price of paper in Japan will shoot up because of the material shortage.

Cross-laminatedTimber.
By pasting together wood boards alternately
in their vertical and horizontal grains,
we can create strong enough mass of wood product
that can replace traditional one-timber pillars.
To build an earthquake tolerant house,
we don’t have to search anymore for
“perfect trees” from quasi-abandoned forests.

LaminatedVeneer Lumber.
This one pastes horizontally thin ribbons
made of spirally stripped woods.
It becomes very thick boards
that can be walls of a pillar-less large room.
Since this method does not require flawless trees,
it can use the lesser-grade trees
commonly found these days in Japanese forests.
It won’t leave much waste either.

A biodryer that is situated in Hakone area.
This structure keeps the temperature inside
at 35ºC that is the level promoting
swift natural evaporation of humidity from woods.
The walls of the building are wet
due to organic vapor from the products inside.

Inside of the biodryer

Bandsaw.
Although this one is for old models,
with prefectural subsidy
a factory in Kanagawa Prefecture introduced
CAD-based robotic machines
that can process a timber with
2 bandsaws operating simultaneously.

How to build a house nowadays in Yokohama
… is a giant LEGO play.
Clever computers prepare the parts
out of timbers swiftly,
and the workers assemble them quickly.

In this new development for the forestry, the policy in Kanagawa has also adjusted to the 21^st century. To be continued next week …

The contact address for Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター is

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/

In the long run we are all dead … A New Hope

Keynes

People said “Business of trees is THE long-term thing.” Yeah. When decent-sized logs are needed for construction in Japan, we have to wait. It’s not only that. Thanks to frequent earthquakes, officially or otherwise Japanese construction standard is rigorous for materials. (Legally defined standard for woods can be found here.) In order to produce logs that can satisfy minimum requirement for housing, a coniferous tree should have at least 14cm of diameter, with straight shape and minimum number of knots visible from outside. Its texture must be dense enough to pass the product test so that there are many minus points, like skewed growth rings or insufficiently covered knots by cambium, which are the signs of inadequacy to cope with sudden loads of earthquake. So as to deliver such coniferous trees in the climate of Japanese archipelago, we need soil rich enough with organic materials and sufficient water, but both should not be too much. Excess nutrients let the trees grow too fast, and lender insufficiently dense texture. Before planting seedlings, foresters need to prepare the ground “just right.” For enough sunshine to baby trees, periodic weeding is necessary for the first 3-5 years. To make the trees with less knots and let the sunlight come through smoothly for photosynthesis, pruning is required until the lowest bow is at about 10-15m high. 10-15m is the threshold for nurturing a profitable tree; foresters use the arboreal characteristics which shows the trunk above the lowest bow become conical with a growth point at the top, and the below is a robust cylinder. Meanwhile, for diameter of a marketable tree, thinning will be required. Too sparse the tree distribution is, too coarse the texture. Too congested, the trees remain lanky for decades. Optimal allocation creates enough room for the canopy to spread evenly to all directions, which helps to make the trunk beautifully circular with just-right hardness. The entire procedures are done in steep Japanese mountains for at least 15 consecutive years. The process requires expertise, and lots of money.

Those are the materials required
for housing construction.
They are prepared for
an order-made private house
in Kamakura.

During the World War II Imperial Japanese government mobilized everything for total war, forests included. In addition, after the atomic and other bombs destroyed almost completely the cities in all over Japan, people needed construction materials to rebuild. The shortage of construction materials was acute. The available domestic logs earned handsome profit. Our great-grand parents deforested quite a lot of mountains for money. (Here is the link to see a photo of Tanzawa Mountains around 1955. It’s, really, a woooooow thing.) Yet, domestic forestry could not meet the demand. Japan had a miracle economic growth till 1973 Oil Crisis. Japanese looked for everywhere on the planet and started to import lots of lots of lots of logs and building materials from all over the world. Eventually Japan became very expensive country where for mass-housing construction cheap imports were a norm even after the reconstruction boom. When you can have low-cost imports, no one bother to look after these domestic trees for mass housing. In case a forest has an enthusiastic owner who takes care of the trees, the products are inevitably expensive. They are for luxurious order-made structures, not for average households. It pushed up the price of woods including imports. The technology of housing started to depart from traditional construction with woods. The colleges reduced the study time of wooden buildings for architecture students, since they must learn more economical way to provide houses. The domestic forestry came to be a quasi-dead industry. The price of the trees collapsed to the bottom in 2013.

This is how Tanzawa Mountains look like
from Hadano City in 2016.

Nominal yen price of an average domestic tree in situ (per usable 1m3)
Source: 2015 White Paper for Japanese Forests and Forestry
Year	Cedar	Cypress	Pine	Number of forestry workers hirable with the price per 1m3 cedar	Average forestry wage (yen) per diem
1955	4478	5046	2976
1960	7148	7996	4600	11.8 (1961 data)	768 (1961 data)
1965	9380	10645	5743	7.7	1220
1970	13168	21352	7677
1975	19726	35894	10899	3.7	5283
1980	22707	42947	11162
1985	15156	30991	7920	1.8	8629
1990	14595	33607	7528
1995	11730	27607	5966	1	11962
2000	7794	19297	4168	0.6	12160
2005	3628	11988	2037	0.4 (2004 data)	11650 (2004 data)
2010	2654	8128	1496
2012	2600	6856	1464
2013	2465	6493	1376
2014	2968	7507	1638
2015	2833	6284	1531

When Japanese grandpas deforested massively, they at least planted seedlings …. expecting they would fetch a good price later. They did not dream the end of unprecedented construction boom for growing population, or international competition. Now the trees in Japan lost the battle to cheap imports and to the changed construction method. The forests were abandoned. The majority of babies planted 70-50 years ago were literally neglected without proper weeding, pruning, and thinning. They are now adult trees. In Kanagawa Prefecture, 40 years are the standard max to harvest a cedar tree to provide regular-sized timber products. Quite many 70 years old artificially planted cedars and cypresses are past their prime and “lower quality” resources for construction. Their forest also creates unintended consequences for environment. In an afforested area with proper cares, the sunshine comes to the ground through the optimally distributed canopy. It lets the seeds slept in the soil wake up under the tall tree. The undergrowth is rich and the biodiversity is high even within a man-made forest. Such vegetation can retain rain drops more efficiently by cushy leaf mold. It provides steady sources of water to the rivers. When a forest is abandoned, the opposite will occur. The steep mountain slope becomes very dark without much green on the floor. When rain falls down, there’s not much on the ground to keep the H2O from heaven. Rain easily becomes a torrent before reaching to a regular stream. On their way, they wash away the soil. Worst case scenario is hillside landslide where a torrential rain becomes ravenous stream within the forest, excavates the mountain itself in massive scale, and scoops up the roots of the trees. The mountain collapses, man-made structures down there will be crushed by tumbling-down boulders and huge trees. Even huge dams can be destroyed. People could be killed and the cities dependent on the water coming from those mountains will have water shortage. This risk is the fundamental reason why the City of Yokohama and Kanagawa Prefecture collect environment tax for funding the efforts to stop at least further degradation of forest in our city and prefecture.

A remnant of a log of Chamaecyparis pisifera from a quasi-abandoned forest in Niiharu.
Even for the amateur’s eyes of mine,
it’s not at commercial grade …
it had about 50cm of diameter ... what a waste …

They are the logs of
Chamaecyparis obtusa presentable for markets.

An artificial forest in Hakone area where we did
thinning exercises for forest instructor training.
It’s the property of Kanagawa Prefecture, and
quite many volunteers enter the site for maintenance.
Nonetheless,
there is oversupply of trees to be pruned and thinned.
The forest floor is this much dark, morning and afternoon.
We trainees talked about “losing the touch of time.”

Even so, when Japanese Meteorological Agency issues a forecast of “effective humidity,” it’s not the rate of vapor in the air. It measures how dry a wood product for housing is, for alerting the people about fire hazards. The weather-people calculate the moving average of daily degree of dryness of a wood situated in their instrument shelters nationwide, and tell us “Today’s dryness of Yokohama is 57% (; this is the average of January 2016).” Living in wooden structures is the foundation of Japanese psyche. We have kept the relationship with wood products despite of the disintegrated forestry industry. Then, very interestingly, thanks to a very new trend of international trade, sustainable development discussion at global policy making, and pure, soothing smell of trees in Japanese traditional houses, a seemingly finished domestic industry might be resurrected soon. I’ll tell you next week what we were shown during the forest instructor training about the efforts for eco-friendly forestry in Kanagawa.

“Project Godzilla – a landscape with an eye”
by Yukinori Yanagui.
Downtown Yokohama had his exhibition “Wondering Position”
at BankArt Studio NYK, ended this New Year Holiday week.
I was intrigued by the image of ruins for Yanagui.
It is made of woods mainly. He’s very Japanese …
I don’t think an artist from Aleppo would
present the concept of destruction in this way.

The contact address for Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター is

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/