Japan’s aging forests demand broader efforts for better use and rejuvenation by owners, traders and citizens

Oct. 30, 2012


Japan’s aging forests demand broader efforts for better use and rejuvenation by owners, traders and citizens

A team of five woodcutters was demonstrating their unique “sakubari” lumbering method before about 30 visitors in Yabe Village in southwestern Japan on a weekend in mid-October. The technique is used to carry felled trees down with overhead wires in steep areas, where heavy machinery cannot be brought in to gather woods cut down. One of the workers operates a line of wires, 18 millimeters in diameter, extended from a pillar tree to another pillar tree up on the slanting slope, while others tie the felled cedar trees,  60 years old and about 15 meters in height, to the wires one by one and let them go 50 to 60 meters down to the foot of the slope.
Unlike the widely used vehicle-based method, the sakubari technique is difficult to learn, because the direction and the angle for stretching the wires over trees to be cut must be carefully decided in view of the situation of a specific lumbering area.
Young fellers long to obtain the technique, which is friendlier to forests, according to Hironori Kurihara, the head of a local forest leaders and workers’ study group. But the technique is becoming less common because of its low productivity. This is just one of numerous challenges facing forest owners and related parties in Japan, at a time when Japan’s forest business is economically infeasible by and large.
The difficulties for Japan’s forestry industry reflect structural reasons. Japanese forest owners have been mostly small and their business remains to be modernized. In addition, Japanese house builders prefer to use imported woods, which can be procured in bulk at lower costs. As demand shifts to foreign woods from domestic woods, cedar trees sell only about 7,000 yen a cubic meter, one-fourth to one-fifth of 30,000 to 35,000 yen until the 1970s, Kurihara says.
Lumber mills in Japan have a processing capacity of 300 to 2,000 cubic meters each a year, far smaller than 10,000 to 100,000 cubic meters in major foreign lumbering countries, estimates Toshihiko Fukushima, a veteran forester who is well versed in the situation in Fukuoka Prefecture, including Yabe Village, and neighboring regions. He also notes that foreign woodcutters fell an average 50 cubic meters of trees a day, about 10 times that for their Japanese counterparts.
Japan’s forests cover an area of about 25 million hectares, two-thirds of its total land. Of this, artificial forests account for 40 pct or 10 million hectares. Japan’s forests in terms of area are unchanged over the past four decades, but their volume has more than doubled during the period.
Trees which are 40 to 60 years old, the ages which are suitable for felling, remain to be cut in many areas throughout Japan. The foremost reason is that if trees are felled, money can be hardly left for forest owners when woodcutting, reforestation and other expenses are drawn from their revenue. This makes them reluctant to fell and sell their trees. But if the situation is attended, Japan's forests will get older, warns Fukushima, 71.
His prescription calls for felling 40 to 60 year old trees, mainly cedars and hinoki Japanese cypresses, at an annual pace of about 40 million cubic meters, about double the current pace, and continue afforestation for a period of 150 years. Then, Japan’s forests should be rebuilt to an ideal condition, he says.
Fukushima, who joined the guided tour of Yabe Village as an adviser, says that Japan’s forests should be properly used and kept in a good condition. This is necessary also in order to attain a target for Japan to reduce its CO2, or carbon dioxide emissions by 6 pct from the 1990 level, he says. Of this target, 3.8 pct must be covered with CO2 absorptions by forests. If forests get old, their CO2 absorptions will decline, making it harder for Japan to achieve the internationally pledged target.
Kurihara’s study group, formed in 1962, cooperates in guided tours and workshops organized by nonprofit organizations in recent years to increase citizens’ awareness about the various roles of forests. The tour to see lumbering sites and plantations in Yabe Village, in the southern part of Fukuoka Prefecture, was organized by the Fukuoka Citizens’ Forest Building Network, inaugurated in 2003.
The group’s activities are supported by a subsidy provided by the prefecture from its revenue collected in the form of the forest environment tax, as it is so called. Fukuoka Prefecture uses the revenue from the tax, estimated at 1.3 billion yen, with 500 yen to be collected from each taxpayer a year, primarily to finance projects to rejuvenate devastated forests, but a few percentage of the tax is provided as subsidies to NPOs to support their programs to enhance public awareness of various problems facing Japan’s forests.
Kota Komori, a key activist of the group, admits that the subsidy system is important, because “we have to increase the forest literacy among people” through various activities. But he is concerned that the tax may be only a temporary solution to the problems facing Japan’s forests.
The tax is used to revitalize forests which are devastated or poorly maintained for 15 years or longer. Komori, 36, says that the definition of forests which are eligible for the subsidy must be studied more carefully so that the tax may be used in an effective manner.
Japan’s domestic forestry business has been threatened mainly by an influx of cheap spruce woods in recent years. Their white laminated products have spread among domestic house builders since they were authorized in Japan in 1995, according to Fukushima. Compared with domestic cedar and other needle leaf woods, laminated spruce woods are used for various purposes because they are stronger and easier to use. But this problem will be solved if domestic wood traders and house builders use Japanese laminated woods actively for wide purposes, he says.
While admitting his simulation aimed at achieving an ideal forest in Japan is rather difficult to implement, Fukushima warns that if Japan fails to properly deal with the situation, it should not only see its forests in an even harder condition but also invite criticism from foreign countries that Japan is damaging foreign forests by continuing to import cheap foreign woods while keeping its forests intact. Japan should make serious efforts to encourage an appropriate use of domestic woods in order to overcome these problems, he says.
Kurihara, 54, who has his own forests, and his group receive guided tours of citizens once or twice a year. Their difficulties, particularly low domestic wood prices, are unlikely to be solved at least immediately. Their works sometimes do not pay, even including subsidies from the national and prefectural governments. But conversations with people through workshops and guided tours “encourage us to continue our jobs,” he says. "We can have a lot of information and hints about our business from them," Kurihara says.