THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE JAPANESE FORESTS. 



IN few other countries are the forests of greater importance to the prosperity of the nation 

 than they are in Japan. The formation of the islands, with their high central mountain 

 ranges and short precipitous swift flowing rivers, make floods particularly prevalent and 

 dangerous, and the necessity of preserving the forest-covering of the upper mountain-slopes 

 proportionately great ; and no other race, with the single exception, perhaps, of the people of 

 the United States, is such a consumer of forest products as the Japanese, all their houses and 

 most of their articles of domestic use being entirely made of wood. The traveler, therefore, 

 watches with some interest, as bearing upon the future of Japan, the condition and prospects 

 of her forests. 



According to the most reliable statistics available, those compiled by Eein, and based in part, 

 at least, upon the report of the Japanese Forestry Exhibit at Edinburgh in 1884, thirty-seven 

 per cent, of the three southern islands that is, of the whole empire, with the exception of the 

 practically unsettled island of Yezo is desert or unproductive land. Twenty-three per cent, 

 is occupied by the mountain forests, eighteen per cent, by the cultivated forests, while rather 

 less than twenty per cent, is devoted to agriculture, the remainder being taken up by build- 

 ings, roads, etc. The cultivated forests, in which it is presumed that the areas surrounding 

 the temples are included, which, although covered with splendid groves of trees, are unpro- 

 ductive except so far as they are made to furnish material for repairing or rebuilding the 

 temples, are well stocked with coniferous trees, Retinosporas, Cryptomerias, and Pines, 

 and furnish all the building material used in the empire. It is said that the Japanese have 

 been making these plantations for twelve hundred years ; and if this is true, they began plant- 

 ing trees for timber before any other people with whose agriculture we are acquainted. 

 Scientific methods might, perhaps, make these plantations, Avhich are mostly the property of 

 individuals, rather more productive, but any great increase of forest supplies can only follow 

 the better management of the mountain forests or the replanting of desert lands. The moun- 

 tain forests, which are the property of t'ie state, may be roughly divided into two belts, the 

 upper composed principally of Hemlocks, and extending from about 5,000 feet above the 

 sea-level to the timber-line, the lower stretching between 2,000 and 5,000 feet elevation, and 

 composed of Beeches, Oaks, Maples, Birches, Pines, and a few Firs and Spruces. The upper 

 belt, owing to its inaccessibility and the bad condition of the mountain roads, is practically 

 untouched, except where mining operations have created a local demand for timber. Scien- 

 tific management and good roads would make this upper coniferous forest yield quantities of 

 valuable material. The deciduous belt below it, which ought to be the most productive part 

 of the Japanese forest, is, wherever we entered it, in a deplorable condition, and although 

 Japan has supplied herself with a Forest Department, we saw no evidence that it is seriously 

 occupying itself with the care of this part of the public domain. There appear to be no rules 



