15 - A History of Tree Planting in Modern Japan: Resource Utilization and Environment Conservation

Summary

In this chapter, the history of forests and forestry in Japan is introduced, covering the Totman forest transition theory, as well as imperial forestry. The concept of mountains and forests in Japan and the concept of forest management are summarized from the perspective of resource utilization and environmental conservation. While “forestry history”—the history of wood resource utilization—from the early modern period, remains important, academic interest has shifted to “forest history,” which is the history of environmental conservation in mountains and forests. Finally, the progression of afforestation in Japan's satoyama during the 150 years since the Meiji era, when modernization progressed, is explained from the perspective of the spread of the greening campaign.

Introduction: Some issues in the field of environmental history

Probably the most widely known historical study of Japanese forests in the world is Totman's The Green Archipelago. This ground-breaking book has been widely read in Japan, thanks in part to the excellent translation and commentary by the eminent forestry scholar Kumazaki Minoru. However, as Kumazaki recently recounted, very little research on the history of Japanese forests and forestry has been disseminated abroad, not only before Totman but also afterwards, despite the vast accumulation of work written in Japanese. For this reason, this book is almost the only reference available to overseas researchers who cannot read Japanese. For example, Williams, who provided a global history of deforestation, and Bennett, who covered the modern history of the plantation and protected areas worldwide, also lacked depth in their descriptions of Japan. Totman was primarily concerned with the use and production of building materials in the pre-modern period and did not cover the full history of Japanese forests and forestry, particularly missing the resource utilization and environmental conservation in the modern period that is directly relevant to the present. Totman wrote about forests and forestry in Japan from the modern period onwards, but this is inadequate. Also, the forestry administration by clans in the early modern period was probably not as smooth as Totman's suggests.

Secondly, the forest transition theory is a way of illustrating the impact of human activities on forests.