What's in a forest?

Japan is a verdant country. Lush, green hills and mountains stretch the length and breadth of the country. About 80% of Japan consists of mountainous areas almost entirely covered in trees, so I guess that it is a country with one of the highest ratios of forests relative to its landmass in the world. However, the majority of these forests are not quite what they might seem....

Earlier this year we felled a small cedar plantation of approximately one hundred trees - something I have been wanting to do for many years. By November we will have cleared all the timber from the site and stockpiled it before sending the best to the lumber mill. This coming winter we will begin the process of turning the vacant lot into a forest garden. Wikipedia succinctly explains forest gardening as...

'.... a low-maintenance sustainable plant-based food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. Making use of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow in a succession of layers, to replicate a woodland habitat.'

So over the next few years our small patch will be turned from a woodland of only two species of tree into a habitat of many different trees and plants providing a varied food supply and also a home to a range of wildlife (Though the plundering local deer and wild boar will be excluded!). In a small way, we are going to be flying in the face of the wisdom of Japanese Government policy of the last 60 years.

In the 1950s and 1960s Japan's post-war economic boom gathered pace and the demand and price of timber rose. The government urged everyone to plant trees, in particular two cedar species, hinoki and sugi. Both are used extensively in construction. TV news reports of the day show the Showa Emperor, shiny shovel in hand, planting saplings. Instilled with national pride and plied with subsidy money, dutifully the Japanese followed suit planting hundreds of millions of cedar saplings over the succeeding decades and in the process uprooted millions of acres of diverse forests (To be fair, they probably also planted some war-denuded landscapes). The march of the cedar also progressed over disused, stepped paddy and arable fields.

Over half a century ago, economic need spurred the cedar tree planting frenzy. Today, unfortunately, low timber prices, expensive labour and an ageing rural population mean that many of these forests - which should be just coming into their prime - are uncared for and are unlikely ever to produce good-quality timber, or be felled at all. Without thinning the trees and lopping their branches, the thick canopy excludes light from the forest floor preventing good growth of the best trees, most other plants and, in turn, any creature that might forage there.

Well tended for these forests can supply much of the timber that Japan uses and also sustain a reasonably diverse ecology. Instead, the verdant forest landscape of Japan consists to a large extent of a plantation monoculture that is under cared for and under used - a sort of organic rust belt.

In recent years, government policy on forestry has changed and a later post will address this. Please also look out for periodic updates on our forest garden.