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Since there’s been no thinning, their growth stopped while their trunks were still narrow. It is time for trees to be cut down. But they are left uncared for due to low demand for domestic timber and a shortage of forestry workers.

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An official of the Sammu city government in Chiba Prefecture. Although the forest area in Japan hardly changed, the amount of greenhouse gases absorbed by forests fell by as much as 20% in the six years through to fiscal 2020, primarily due to an increase in the proportion of old trees, which photosynthesize less than younger ones, as the country’s forestry industry declines.

© Yomiuri Shimbun

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

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How about chopping down the cedar trees off of western Tokyo? Replace them with young trees of various sorts to recreate a forest again, instead of a failed industrial tree farm that continues to torment the population of springtime Tokyo?

8 ( +8 / -0 )

@Yrrak

Most forestry in Japan is done on steep mountainsides where that kind of machine cannot be used.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

How about chopping down the cedar trees off of western Tokyo? Replace them with young trees of various sorts to recreate a forest again, instead of a failed industrial tree farm that continues to torment the population of springtime Tokyo?

That precise project was considered. The impetus of course, was political as a election pledge that might resonate with hayfever suffering voters, Tokyo politicians did the following:

In that 2016 study, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government asked sufferers what to do about the problem. The top answer in the multiple-choice survey was for the government to do research to find a cure for hay fever. In second place was to reduce the release of pollen by felling trees and trimming branches.

The results was:

Aiming to reduce pollen production, the national research body Forest Research and Management Organization, as of the end of 2017, had developed 142 varieties of low-pollen cedar and three no-pollen types, as well as 56 varieties of low-pollen cypress. Low-pollen varieties typically release less than 1 percent of the volume that regular trees produce.

I didn't quite understand this logic, because the main problem is cedar trees that were planted a long time ago around, and that are economically unproductive to manage or harvest, and so are just left where they are. Gradually clearing them in sections and replacing with a more native balanced type of species forest would benefit both the voters, and the wildlife that would have more diversity. Instead they go for the option of developing new cedar types. But the problem is not that there isn't enough cedar, it's just that most of it isn't needed.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Patricia Yarrow

I remember seeing hundreds of posters on my daily commute way back in 2006, featuring our great former governor Shintaro Ishihara (who was not a thief at all, I am informed), right arm raised in a defiant fist, promising to do precisely that. A bold policy of reforestation with superior, native Japanese trees to replace the vulgar, foreign cedar trees which had given him hay fever the year before.

All we needed to do was to watch him take billions of yen from our coffers, and he would rid us of the scourge of cedar-tree-based Kafunsho.

I'm sure such an honourable man wouldn't have just taken our money and not spend it in the way he assured us he would? Surely all the cedar trees have gone now?

3 ( +3 / -0 )

No demand for domestic timber? A 4 meter cedar 2x4 cost 1400 yen at the contractor supply store here.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

How about chopping down the cedar trees off of western Tokyo? Replace them with young trees of various sorts to recreate a forest again, instead of a failed industrial tree farm that continues to torment the population of springtime Tokyo?

excellent idea. And if there isn't enough domestic demand for lumber, I'm sure it can be exported.

I remember seeing hundreds of posters on my daily commute way back in 2006, featuring our great former governor Shintaro Ishihara (who was not a thief at all, I am informed), right arm raised in a defiant fist, promising to do precisely that. A bold policy of reforestation with superior, native Japanese trees to replace the vulgar, foreign cedar trees which had given him hay fever the year before.

All we needed to do was to watch him take billions of yen from our coffers, and he would rid us of the scourge of cedar-tree-based Kafunsho.

I'm sure such an honourable man wouldn't have just taken our money and not spend it in the way he assured us he would? Surely all the cedar trees have gone now?

Derek- I remember that too.

Well, both Shinzo and Shintaro are gone, and so is the money they stole from the public. All I can say is good riddance to them both.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

A machine can cut acres of trees in a day,it take about one minute for a machine to down a tree from it trunk

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

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