WOODS FOR THE TREES

Published Date

November, 2009

ENVIRONMENT

Winifred Bird visits Hayami Ringyo, one of only a handful of forests in Japan that have successfully integrated wilderness into the timber plantation. 

Find the Kii Peninsula on a map of central Japan, and you may think the cartographer has made a mistake. Below the sprawling urban nexus of Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe hangs down a bulge of land which appears nearly uninhabited. Aside from a string of small cities lining the coast the map shows a seemingly uniform expanse of forested mountains, penetrated only by a few windy two-lane roads.

Venture onto one of those lonely roads, however, and the visitor to this spiritual heartland of Japan will soon discover that the blanket of forest divides into two very different patterns. The hills that have a soft, mottled appearance are covered in warm-temperate evergreen broadleaf forest. This type of forest is characterized by shiny-leaved trees, a great diversity of plant and animal life (over 100 types of tree compose the upper level alone), and a gently rounded crown. Though it is the natural climax forest of much of Japan southwest of Nagoya, warm-temperate evergreen broadleaf forest is now quite rare.

Interspersed between these broadleaf forests are the timber plantations that account for about 40% of Japan's woodland. Here the mono-cropped conifers (mainly hinoki cypress and sugi, officially Cryptomeria but often called Japanese cedar) stand ramrod straight, ideal for the housing market they are destined for. Sometimes the trees are strong and healthy, but often they are spindly and closely packed, the result of inadequate thinning that is widely recognized as a serious problem throughout Japan. Because sunlight can't penetrate these un-thinned forests, they are dark and for the most part devoid of small plants, birds and other creatures. But there is also a third type of forest on the Kii Peninsula: that owned by fifty-six-year-old Hayami Tohru, scion of timber barons and champion of sustainable forestry.

Hayami manages 813 hectares of prime timberland in the Owase area, one of Japan's oldest timber-growing regions (he also owns 249 acres of broadleaf forest). These 813 hectares are light. They are pleasant to walk through, with widely spaced stands of some of the country's finest hinoki growing in patches that range from infant to centenarian. Chest-high banks of fern grow under the trees, along with hana-myoga, konara oak, and according to Hayami over 240 other kinds of plants. Bears, flying squirrels, Japan's endangered giant red salamander, and countless other animals find a home in these woods as well. In other words, the forest is a blend of wilderness and plantation that is both financially and ecologically productive.

"Hayami Ringyo is brilliantly managed, and that's very rare. I think at most there are twenty or thirty plantation forests like it in Japan," says Iwai Yoshiya, retired professor of forest science at Kyoto University and editor of Forestry and the Forestry Industry in Japan (UBC Press, 2002).

Hayami says he has achieved this remarkable balance between economy and ecology largely by what he terms the "engineering of light." Regular thinning leaves 20 percent of the canopy open, allowing enough sunlight to reach the forest floor for understory plants to grow. These in turn produce the berries, nuts, flowers, and debris that feed forest animals and build healthy soil. Fallen trees and undergrowth are left as much as possible in place, providing another type of habitat, as is growth along stream banks and roads.

I walked with Hayami through a patch of his woods on a rainy afternoon in March, the sort of day this sodden region is famous for: clouds creeping down into fingered valleys, trees thrown into black silhouette along the ridges. Hayami was unperturbed by the rain. His round figure bundled into a bright red quilted jacket, enormous horn-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, and a mole-like fuzz of hair on his head, he looked for all the world like some yet-to-be-identified forest creature out for a stroll. Hayami says he spends about two thirds of his time in Tokyo, tending his duties as a member of various governmental panels on forestry policy and current head of the Forest Management Association of Japan, a national industry group representing 480 forestry companies—but despite that, he is undeniably a product of these woods. "Call me the kami [god] of Hayami forest," he jokes when I ask him his title.

The Hayami family has been practicing sustained yield forestry on this land since 1790. That sounded impressive to my American ears, but Hayami told me it's about average for a timber family in the Owase area. In Japan the practice of planting trees for lumber goes back about a century earlier than that, to the late seventeenth century. It wasn't until after the Second World War, however, that silviculture truly boomed, with an estimated 90 percent of Japan's plantations established since then.

At first, planting took place to restore forests felled during the war and to provide wood to rebuild Tokyo and other bombed-out cities. Later the demands of rapid economic development further fuelled reforestation. With government encouragement, large expanses of natural forest were cut and replanted with fast-growing, easy-to-work sugi or high-quality hinoki cypress. Hayami grew up in these boom years of forestry and remembers well the prosperity that meant maids and multiple bathrooms for big timber families like his.

Yet even at the peak of growth, the very social and economic forces that drove forestry's expansion were laying the groundwork for its subsequent demise. Starting in the 1960s, thriving urban centers sucked population from mountain villages—population that was needed to tend newly planted forests of hinoki and sugi. Meanwhile, to increase the supply of cheap lumber for development, the government in 1960 liberalized wood imports and thus opened Japan's labor-intensive, inefficient forestry industry to global competition. Since then, the price of lumber in relation to wages has fallen steadily.

The result of all this was that many forests were neglected and a range of problems developed. For one, without proper thinning, light doesn't reach the forest floor, so the soil remains bare. This leads to soil erosion and siltation of rivers, and the poor soil base renders trees liable to topple during storms. Plants and animals also lose their forest habitat. But the ultimate irony is that the tree crop itself doesn't develop properly. In a vicious cycle, the value of the poorly tended trees fell further.

"In the past thirty years there hasn't been one day when the price of lumber was higher than the day before," says Hayami. He has managed to pull his company through thanks to investments his father made in forest roads and machinery, and through his own emphasis on efficiency and innovation. "These days if you don't change, you disappear," he says.

In his case, efficiently grown, mature logs fetch premium prices, which help finance proper care of the forest—which in turn ensures high quality timber. For many forest owners who got into the business after the war, the cycle has worked in the opposite direction, with income and forest health spiralling down. Some have turned to forestry owners associations, private companies, or increasingly popular environmental volunteer groups for help in managing their forests. The government has also set a goal of thinning 3.3 million hectares of forest by 2013. Yet in general, the problem remains.

"Most Japanese forests are becoming unhealthy, and the problem has gotten worse recently," says retired forestry professor Iwai.

The situation is at once discouraging and full of potential. Eighty percent of the wood used in Japan comes from abroad, yet the country is home to about 10 million hectares of plantation forest.

"Although we have been facing some marketing challenges, we have a lot of forest," says Maezawa Eishi, forest program leader at World Wide Fund for Nature Japan, an international environmental organization working to promote sustainable forestry and reduce illegally logged wood imports in Japan. "It's a shame that we still depend on problematic foreign timber." Demand for forestry products certainly exists, as do the rich natural resources to meet a good portion of that demand. If Japan can revive its forestry industry in a sustainable manner, it has the power to positively impact rural communities as well as protect vital forest ecosystems.

One important step towards sustainable forestry is the implementation of third-party monitoring systems to certify the conditions under which wood is grown and processed. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is one such highly respected international certifying body; in 2000 Hayami Ringyo became the first forest in Japan to receive FSC certification by meeting the group's strict environmental and labor standards. The government and industry in Japan are increasingly aware of the importance of such systems.

"Over the past three years FSC certification of companies that use wood, especially paper companies, has increased drastically," says Iwase Yasunori of Forsta, Japan's FSC working group. Iwase says as of June 2009 twenty-seven forests and over 900 companies that use wood within Japan had received FSC certification. An additional eighty-two forests have been certified by the Sustainable Green Ecosystem Council, a Japan-only certifying body. These forest owners and companies are pioneering a forestry system that enhances rather than undermines biodiversity and environmental health.

"I think the potential for man-made forests is huge," says Hayami. Indeed, his forests are living proof that economic and environmental health are not only compatible but completely interdependent. That principle just may be the key to solving Japan's current forest crisis.

Winifred Bird writes about nature and science from Kumano, Japan. 

Q&A: Hayami Tohru

Winifred Bird: On your homepage there is a quote by Alfred Möller that reads, "The most beautiful forests are also the most productive." For you, what is the definition of a beautiful forest?

Hayami Tohru: I love forests that are rich with living creatures, where you can sense the breath of these living creatures. Also, the kind of forest where, when an ordinary person enters it, he or she feels moved.

It's a policy of Hayami Ringyo to minimize the environmental impact of its forestry. How do you achieve that?

In forestry, we plant trees and then change the ecology of the surrounding area to favour those trees, so essentially forestry has a heavy impact on the environment. Forest managers have got to recognize that. Within that situation, I try to make my forest resemble a natural forest as closely as possible. It's a question of increasing biodiversity. Also, by improving efficiency, we can reduce the per-unit impact of forest products, just like in other industries. That's Japan's greatest strength.

You've said that in order to survive falling timber prices, it's critical for the forestry industry to constantly evolve. Can you give a concrete example of that?

In forestry weeding is extremely important, right? You plant a little tree and in the summer, wham, the weeds shoot up. So cutting weeds is considered obvious. But what if you could grow trees without weeding? The point isn't the weeding itself, it's growing a certain number of trees, and there are other ways to achieve that. Actually, most of the time I don't weed. Instead, I changed the way I grow seedlings. For example, if most trees grow 20 centimeters in a year, plant trees that grow 50 centimeters. My seedlings are all like NBA basketball players.

You're proposing a new method of forestry. What has the response been?

When I hold study meetings or things like that, there are always people—in particular young people—who want to try out forestry for themselves. Young people who enter forestry now haven't experienced a better era, so they don't have the same sort of nostalgia that my generation does. They're taking on the challenge of forestry as it is now, in a very difficult time for the industry. I really think that's wonderful.

According to your website, Hayami Ringyo's energy consumption is about half the national average for forestry. How do you achieve that?

Because we operate very efficiently, machines are used less. We've rationalized our operations in many ways. One other point is that I really love to use old things and keep them in good shape. We excel at fixing all sorts of machines.

What is your vision as head of the Forest Management Association of Japan?

Japan's forests [planted in the years after WWII] have now entered the phase of cutting. But currently, the number of forests left unplanted after they're cut is rising. We've got to create a business model that ensures these forests will be properly replanted, and once again renew the cycle of planting and harvesting.

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