The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Pre-Industrial Japan

Chapter Six. Plantation Forestry: Economic Aspects of Its Emergence

Chapter Six Plantation Forestry: Economic Aspects of Its Emergence Plantation silviculturebecame widespread inJapan during the latter half of the eighteenth century.1 Following the early modern predation , demand for forest yield continued to exceed supply, and afforestation and eventually plantation silviculturedeveloped to meet that demand by increasing the desired forest output. A sharp rise in the quality and quantity of available silvicultural knowledge showed woodland holders how to pursue plantation culture successfully, and changes in economic relationships enabled rural producers to penetrate and profit from urban markets.2 These developments made entrepreneurial forestry a comparatively attractive investment for the woodland operator. Plantation culture thus became possible in eighteenth-century Japan, but not equally so throughout the islands. In some places plantations rose and flourished; in others they no doubt were tried and failed; in most places they never appeared. Within broad ecological limits this spatial distribution was determined by the general economics oflumbering and the particular economics of afforestation techniques. The nurturing of forests entailed substantial costs, but it also brought economic dividends to its practitioners, and where the cost-benefit ratio was sufficiently favorable, plantation forestry developed .3 Elsewhere woodland continued to be managed lessintensively, much by rudimentary methods, and some in the classic manner of exploitation. 130 Plantation Forestry 131 Those economic determinants operated for both entrepreneurial and governmental afforestation. The logic of the former may be selfevident ; that of the latter requires explication. By and large han officials regarded woodland as a source of government income. They fostered timber production to lower maintenance costs and generate revenue. Well-wooded domains, such as Tsugaru, Akita, Owari, Tosa, Obi, and Hitoyoshi, to name some of the most notable, pursued vigorous forest policies with economic objectives uppermost in mind, and they adopted silvicultural techniques accordingly. In consequence, explaining the spatial character of plantation forestry requires an examination of its costs and benefits. Such an examination does not yield statistically satisfying results because the forest industry consisted of numerous small enterprises whose terminology and accounting methods were highly idiosyncratic and whose surviving records are spotty and inconsistent. Moreover, the business was only partially monetized, and no stable institutions preserved records encompassing all its activities. As a result, assembling complete and integrated figures appears impossible . Scattered data do abound, however, and they yield figures that illustrate the costs and advantages of plantation forestry and suggest its underlying logic. The Costs of Plantation Silviculture Plantation techniques were costly. Afforestation required a heavy initial investment of labor, and stand maintenance entailed periodic expenditures for decades thereafter. Moreover, the lumber producer —whether village, villager, urban entrepreneur, government (bakufu or han), or combination thereof—had to absorb much of the harvesting and marketing costs before he could finally recover his investment. Even under the best of conditions plantation forestry thus involved long-term, incremental capital outlays. And conditions often were not ideal. Indeed, lumbering was a risky business. In a hundred ways vagaries of weather could ruin a lumberman's enterprise at any moment between the first planting and the final sale a half century later. Disease might ruin a stand; neglect could hurt as badly. Theft and vandalism were chronic problems, particularly where land scarcity was acute. Wildfire was a perennial danger, especially from the 132 The Emergence of Regenerative Forestry burning done by villagers to prepare land for tillage or a new year of pasturage. And finally, the market value of a stand could fluctuate sharply: city conflagrations opened new markets for lumbermen, but their occurrence was notoriously irregular. Even favorable conditions did not assure the rise of timber plantations . Given the scarcity of capital in early modernJapan, long-term investment in forest production was hardly the most attractive opportunity an entrepreneur might envisage. And halfway measures were possible. A woodsman could enhance a stand with minimal investment by merely assisting a forest's natural recovery after logging. However, that strategy ofrudimentary nurturing tended to minimize the gain in yield. Alternatively, the woodsman could maximize investment so as to maximize return, using elaborate and expensive measures to guide his forest from seedbed to skidway. The costs of those measures can be examined in terms of the three aspects of silviculture discussed in chapter 5: seedling and slip culture and aftercare. Of course, plantation lumbermen also incurred logging and marketing costs, but exploitative loggers did too, so we need not examine them here. Costs of transport were important, but they burdened exploitative lumbermen...