In
the previous essay, I wrote about the long ecological shadow that Japan has
cast upon the rainforests of Southeast Asia since the end of World War Two. The
rainforests have been devastated, bringing wealth to major Japanese
corporations, and to corrupt governments in Southeast Asia, but economic and
natural devastation upon the poor people in the Philippines, Indonesia, and
Malaysia. Not even to mention the forests themselves.
But
this has not always been the case. Before American Admiral Matthew Perry forcefully
opened Japan to colonization and world trade in 1854—in what we would call
pre-industrial Japan—Japan was a totally isolated land. Nobody came in, and
nobody left, especially since about 1600. Japan needed and desired wood
products, but they had to get them entirely from their own land.
Japan
consists of four major and many minor volcanic islands. And they were young
islands, formed by volcanic eruptions in geologically recent times. Despite
profound temperature differences between the cold forests of the northwest and
the warm wet forests of the southeast, trees covered the entire archipelago;
there were no natural grasslands or deserts.
The
mountains are steep and consist of young rock with thin soils. Between the
mountains are a few areas of rich soil eroded down from the mountains. Life was
difficult in the mountains. The only way to raise food was to create terraces,
which had stairsteps of flat, wet rice paddies. Most of the people lived, as
they do today, crowded into the small flatlands.
As
Conrad Totman has written in The Green Archipelago: Forestry in
Preindustrial Japan, one might have expected Japan to be, by 1854, a
devastated landscape. The major natural resource that they had for building was
wood. There was no major source of limestone or clay for building. Once the
people started cutting down the forests, it took a long time for the forests to
grow back. The only reason that Japan was still a green archipelago in 1854 was
because the government of Japan, fractured as it was, developed sophisticated
techniques of forest management. After World War Two, Japan financed the
widespread destruction of Asian rainforests; but before 1854, they carefully
managed and renewed their domestic forests. And they did so better than just
about any other country in the history of the world up to that point.
Many
of the Japanese forests today are not natural forests but are plantations. I
noticed this when, as an exchange student, I visited Japan in 1974. My host
family drove us along the highways, which led through intensely managed
landscapes; there were even rice paddies along the sides of the road. When I
looked up at the dark forests, I noticed that they seemed to be flashing as we
passed rows of trees. The trees did not form a uniform cover but were all lined
up in military precision.
I took this photo in 1974. The forests on the mountains are plantations, and the green grass on the roadside is rice.
From
about 1600 to 1854, during a time when forests were being destroyed worldwide,
Japan was re-growing its forests.
There
were two major periods of deforestation in Japanese history. The first was the
Heian (old name for Kyōto) period, about the year 700. At this time, powerful
lords built huge mansions and castles, all of them from wood. That is, from
very good wood, made from the large straight knot-free trunks of hinoki (Chamaecyparis
obtusa) and sugi (Cryptomeria japonica), both relatives of cypresses
and sequoia trees. This was a period of high cultural attainment and the
development of a reverence for nature. But at the same time, the people
(working for the lords) were cutting down the very forests they revered. After
many decades of this, much of the landscape was degraded. The trees that
continued to grow were mostly deciduous trees such as oak and chestnut, which
were smaller and more suitable for charcoal production than to build great
structures. Peasants also used branches and litter as fertilizer for their
fields (since there was very little livestock and very little animal manure).
The lords continued to build castles but used the good wood for the frames and
edges, where it could be seen; they used lower quality wood for the walls,
which they covered with plaster. Since warfare was nearly constant, the plaster
castles were more resistant to incendiary attacks. Wood shingles were replaced
with ceramic tiles, which were also safer from fire. Fine wood floors gave way
to cheap floors covered with tatami (woven sedge) mats. Peasants were forbidden
to use sugi or hinoki wood for their houses. Fortunately, rural villages could
make almost everything they needed from bamboo, which grew rapidly from
persistent root stocks. But even these changes did not save the forests.
By
the year 718, a crisis was developing. That year, the Yōrō Code advocated tree
planting to prevent soil erosion and flooding. In 821, an order explicitly
called for forest protection to keep water supplies safe. Deforestation
temporarily slowed, but by 1050 rapacious deforestation began in the same area.
Pine barrens (hageyama) developed on degraded soil. The Heian period declined,
largely due to the loss of forests. This is not what I learned in Japanese
history classes, which focused on warriors.
Starting
about 1200, the center of power shifted to Edo (modern Tōkyō), which had
largely intact forests. Massive deforestation began again. Nobody actually
owned land, but had land use rights, which were transferable and legal.
Villages had forests they could manage, and villages could determine punishment
for people in the village or from outside cutting wood—even breaking off
branches—without authorization. This was serious business. Some disputes were
handled by trial by ordeal, in which disputants handled red hot sickles or
axes, or at least faced the threat of it. Many of the finest forests (the
ohayashi) were reserved for the lords—one quarter for the shōgun, three
quarters for the daimyō barons. You didn’t mess with these forests either.
According
to Totman, the last original forest in Japan was cut in 1692. These figures do
not include Ezo (now Hokkaidō), which is still covered with spruce and fir
forests, and which has never been until recently an integral part of Japan.
In
response to wood shortages, restrictions were severe. The central shogunate
government, in 1699, strictly enforced maximum house sizes for villagers: a
village headman could have a house no larger than about 4 by 30 meters, a
taxable peasant no more than about 4 by 6, and all others only 4 by 4 meters.
The poorer people also had to use smaller planks. Forests continued to shrink,
especially after earthquakes destroyed major urban areas by causing fires. Edo
was rebuilt several times, always from wood. The biggest was the Meireki fire
of 1657. At such times, villages could earn a lot of money selling their wood
to the cities. The Japanese were serious about saving their forests. Wood
poachers could quietly steal wood when they cut it with saws, but axes made a
lot of noise. To reduce poaching, the government outlawed the use of saws.
By
the 1500s, it became obvious to the leaders that replanting trees was
necessary, mainly for wood from which to rebuild castles destroyed in wars.
(Sometimes the forests themselves were destroyed in wars.) I am not aware that
extensive tree planting happened in any other part of the world. In 1649, the
Edo government urged villages to plant trees and bamboo. In 1650, the daimyō of
Kuwana said that there should be a thousand trees planted for every tree cut
down. Why so many? I explain it below. In 1713, the government issued a major
directive for replanting trees.
Replanting
was not merely a matter of throwing seeds on the ground. A soil bed was
prepared, usually out in nature. Either lots of seeds or a smaller number of
slips (branch cuttings) were stuck in these beds. Once the seedlings or slips
were about a foot high, they could be transplanted into the forests or into
plantations. Every step was carefully done to make sure that transplants would
have plenty of roots in contact with moist soil. There were many silviculture
manuals in circulation at that time. There were instructions for how to dig the
holes, including keeping dead leaves out of the hole, which might impede the
contact between transplant roots and soil. The instructions even specified that
the planter had to give each transplant a little tug to make sure it was firmly
set.
In
some places, these superman-Johnny-Appleseeds planted over 300 thousand trees
(Totman has the numbers in his book). In just one small part of Kyūshū, in
1824, twelve thousand man days were spent on planting over a million
sugi seedlings. In 1820-1865, in the Kikuchi district, 9,327,000 sugi and
hinoki seedlings were planted.
Why
so many? Because most of them died. In subsequent years, planters would thin
out the saplings. When the saplings were large enough, the ones thinned out
could be used as poles or tool handles. Who did the planting? At first, it was
forced labor or punishment for poaching, but later the planters got paid, or
were given permission to cut some of the trees for charcoal. The government
preferred labor from villagers who had a stake in the outcome. When forced
labor planted the trees, they all died because of sloppy work; when villagers
planted them, half survived.
Aftercare,
for many years, was important. This included shaking the snow off of
transplants that were bent over, and by cutting away vines. Village patrols
maintained firebreaks.
Wood
sources developed local reputations. For example, the best timber for making
ships came from the south, even though this was not the main area in which
hinoki and sugi would grow naturally. This is because, in warm moist
conditions, the wood grew faster, had bigger xylem vessels, which filled with
air when the wood dried—great for making ships. By the nineteenth century,
plantation wood was much preferred to wild wood. Plantations grew on the best
soil and were in the most accessible locations, near a river for easy
transport. Wild trees on high mountain slopes were just not as profitable.
Extensive
tree planting centuries ago is one reason that you cannot study forest ecology
in Japan by just looking at which species of trees grow where they do today.
The range of hinoki and sugi trees today may be the result of planting, not of
nature.
Cut
off from the world by choice, the Japanese government recognized the need for
forestry. It was not an esthetic, but a practical, decision to save their
forests. For whatever reason, they led the world in forest conservation. A
proclamation in Akita, issued in 1615, said that they needed forests for their
future. This changed in the twentieth century, when Japan began its wars of aggression
and then, later, financed the destruction of Asian rainforests (see previous
essay). But I was astonished to discover that Japan was centuries ahead of the
rest of the world in forest conservation.