The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Pre-Industrial Japan

Chapter Five. Silviculture: Its Principles and Practice

Chapter Five Silviculture: Its Principles and Practice The timber scarcity that emerged in seventeenth-centuryJapan gave rise to a negative regimen whose primary function was to keep forests producing wood for the ruling elite's cities, monuments, and treasuries. Difficulties in provisioning persisted, however, which fostered silviculture: the purposeful growing oftrees through application of arboreal knowledge and insight. The Intellectual Context of Silviculture Most early modern silvicultural writing was imbedded in a broader agronomic literature because the shortfall in woodland output was only one aspect of a more basic problem. Tokugawa society was encountering irregular but intensifying scarcity in most types of biosystem yield, including food. Consequently, the search for ways to increase forest output occurred together with a quest for solutions to other insufficiencies of rural production. The overall problem was addressed in a wide-ranging literature known as jikatasho or nosho, "agricultural treatises" or "farm manuals," written by itinerant scholars, village headmen, practicing farmers, minor officials, and others.1 Generally, the manuals attempted to be comprehensive in their treatment of rural affairs. The more elaborate ones assumed that habits of work and thought, human relationships, and patterns of village organization, as well as technology, agricultural practices, 116 Silviculture 117 and environmental context, all influenced the process of production and hence the attainment of general well-being. In their comprehensiveness and their view that production was influenced by all pertinent factors, the writings were, at least in a primitive sense, ecological in character. More precisely, because their ultimate concern was the well-being of the human community rather than the entire ecosystem , one can describe them as homocentric autecological works. The authors directed some attention to woodland because they clearly saw its use as integral to rural life and production, which they viewed, in turn, as fundamental to the vitality of society as a whole. During the seventeenth century, well before these farm manuals appeared, a number of political leaders and official advisers advocated tree planting and the maintenance of forest stability and productivity.2 Around 1650, for example, Matsudaira Sadatsuna, daimyo of Kuwana domain, urged woodsmen to "plant a thousand seedlings for every tree" they cut. A decade later Yamaga Soko, a political commentator and adviser, admonished woodsmen to log only in the proper season, not to overcut, and to replant harvested areas. In the early eighteenth century advice became more precise, with Kaibara Atsunobu, adviser to a minor daimyo, recommending in 1709 that ifwoodsmen "divide mountain forests into several tens of sections and cut off one section per year, the whole forest willflourish and lumber increase." Such official advocacy of rotation cutting, as well as the promotion of other silvicultural principles, reflected the appearance of these ideas in agricultural treatises. Thus, in 1668 the author of Jikata kikigaki, one of the earliest manuals, wrote how to produce pine firewood: Plant an area two cho square [approximately five acres] each year for ten years. During the eleventh year clear-cut the area planted the first year and set out pine seedlings in the clearing. [Repeatingthat practice annually], firewood will never disappear.If you plant seedlings at three-foot intervals, you will grow 57,600 trees per two cho. In thirteen years they will yield 3 to 4 bundles of faggots per tree, for an annual yield of 170,000 bundles.3 Although the advice was not without flaw, it was indicative of the practical attention to detail and performance that informed jikatasho in general. The major seminal work in the genre was Miyazaki Antei's Nogyo 118 The Emergence of Regenerative Forestry zensho, completed in 1697.* Cognizant of the importance of woodlots in rural life, Antei devoted the last two of his ten fascicles to trees and forests and touched on them at several other places.5 Kano Kyojifinds four basic themes present in Antei's discussion of woodland: 1. Forests are valuable for both farmers and the realm: they should be nurtured in the manner of field crops, with valuable trees being planted and useless ones controlled. Trees planted in forests are of value for construction, fuel, and food and thus contribute to warmer houses and better health. When planted around one's homestead, they reduce winter wind, discourage burglars, prevent extramural fires from reaching buildings , yield firewood and fertilizer materials, and through thinning provide useful lumber. 2. Sound forestry requires planning: for best results both planting and harvesting should be undertaken at proper season...