Just Enough. Azby Brown

of the management and reforesting is made possibly by extensive and detailed tree censuses begun in the mid-seventeenth century, including actual stem counts and descriptions of stands of trees and bamboo. These have evolved into periodically updated forest registers, a key database that government officials, forest wardens, and entrepreneurs can use to plan and coordinate their activity. Similarly, these registers are essential resources for the policy-makers and scholars who write and publish the forestry guidebooks through which the new regenerative forestry methods are disseminated.

      The government still reserves extensive forestland for itself, in the form of ohayashi, or “lord’s forests.” These include the best stands of construction-grade timber, the conifer woodlands on the upper slopes. There are mountainsides near Aoyagi that the peasants are forbidden to enter for any purpose without permission, though it is usually granted for cutting and collecting undergrowth, cutting lumber for dams and other irrigation works, and other clearly essential needs. Often villagers are required to pay fees for access, however, and to report dead or fallen trees and violations by others.

      The government has become more understanding of villagers’ needs than in Shinichi’s grandfather’s time, but it still feels it must tightly regulate access. Most years, Shinichi and his neighbors are allowed to scavenge nearby logging sites for usable material after logging has been completed, after which the forest will be closed for years to allow regrowth. Villagers are sometimes granted access to forests in return for replanting. Enterprising villagers have been known to obtain permission to replant clear-cut conifer forests in larch, whose needles fall in autumn and can be used as extra fertilizer for the fields, while providing openings for sunlight to reach the forest floor and encourage undergrowth.

      Control of most lower forests, largely broadleaf woodland as well as bamboo forest and grassland, has also been granted to the villages. The greater portion is generally communal land, with access governed by the carefully worked-out rules of iriai. Shinichi and many of his neighbors hold forest land with primary rights of disposition, so they can use it as they see fit. But in reality the boundaries are often unclear. Other village households share use of nearby mountains in an arrangement called wariyama, extremely common but at times contentious. These agreements sometimes divide forest access equally among all parties, and sometimes on the basis of the arable land area each household tills, while others stipulate different types of access for different purposes at different times. It is very confusing, and despite the existence of written records, disagreements arise that require arbitration by the other village elders.

      Nevertheless, much of the woodland around the village is managed by the villagers themselves, and it meets their needs. Shinichi has standing permission to fell trees for home use or special needs and to gather undergrowth from village land. All of the villagers require more firewood than building timber, and they have standing needs for fertilizer material and forest foodstuffs, so not much tree cutting is initiated by them.

      Regardless of the basic forest rights that villagers enjoy, the government designates particularly desirable trees as tomeki, or reserved trees, which can’t be cut by villagers no matter where they stand. In fact, an outstanding tall, straight hinoki about two hundred years old has shaded Shinichi’s work yard since long before his grandfather’s time. This is a tomeki, and though it has stood in place for generations, Shinichi knows that at any time it could be cut and carted away, with no compensation to him or his family. Seen overall, the rights to forest products are basically zoned and divided geographically, but often in shades of gray, with much overlap. Satisfying the many conflicting needs requires adequate oversight.

      guardians of the forest

      On forestry matters, Shinichi and the other villagers answer to Daisuke Ohbayashi, a forest overseer—ohayashi mamori—and one of the village elders of Aoyagi. This office was established a century ago, when the government was still attempting to insure adequate timber supplies for itself by prohibiting access to others. Peasant officials like Ohbayashi’s grandfather acquired status and badges of office—the right to wear swords and to use a family name in public—and minor stipends paid in rice, so for all intents and purposes they became low-ranking samurai for their trouble. And trouble it was. They discovered that policing the lord’s forest was nearly impossible, for villagers always found surreptitious means to gain access to what they understandably felt was their hereditary gathering ground.

      The job included maintaining boundary markers and signs, preventing theft and unauthorized charcoal burning, and monitoring sanctioned logging activities. But when the official focus shifted from prohibitive conservation to large-scale replanting, the nature of the forest patrols changed as well, and Ohbayashi’s job is now quite a bit easier than either his grandfather’s or his father’s. His forest patrols still keep an eye out for fire, storm damage, and theft, but these activities are more likely to be performed communally by the villagers instead of by officials, who now take a more supervisory role. More importantly, through the forest patrols and by acting as paid woodsmen during their off season, the villagers like Shinichi and his neighbors take an active part in nurturing seedlings and maintaining the overall health of the forest.

      Regenerative forestry as practiced so successfully relies on the application of agricultural knowledge, much of it derived from ancient practices refined over centuries and handed down by woodsmen, farmers, and gardeners, collated and supplemented with new knowledge and recent experience, and disseminated through printed texts. It builds on existing awareness of the role of healthy forests in maintaining viable watersheds, and on experience in using silviculture to control rivers, limit erosion, and protect arable land. Though the main purpose is to produce large quantities of construction material, the degree to which timber forests, broadleaf forests, grassland, waterways, and arable land form an integral whole whose parts must be kept in balance is reflected in the techniques adopted for germinating, nurturing, harvesting, and transporting the timber. It is an ongoing process of incremental adjustment, monitoring, accommodation, and readjustment, with ample provision for feedback from many sources. And this process, difficult and imperfect though it is, plays a tremendous role supporting a high-quality life for city dwellers and peasants alike.