Study On Forestry History Of Japan

Japan and China share similarities in many aspects: geographically located in eastern Asia, both have vast population, large mountainous regions, but limited plains, lack natural resources, frequent natural disasters, have a history of forest religion, and keen to the wood structures in ancient times. Japan is also known as the country of forest, with 67 percent of its land covered with forests. In contrast, China has much less forest resources, with only 18.2 percent of the land covered by forest, ranked in the 130th in the world. China also faces increasing threats from environment deterioration caused by population growth, air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and deforestation, etc., which severely impairs theeconomic development of our nation as well as the living quality of the citizens. The......Conference articulated the new social economic development policy that emphasizes the harmonized development between human activities and nature. To rehabilitate our nation's forest ecosystem and truly realize the harmonization between human being and our environments, we have a long way to go. In addition to educating citizens in the aspects of environments, laws, and regulations, promoting nationwide forest plantations, it is very beneficial to study the history of forest evolution and development of some modernized countries such as Japan, and learn from their past success and failures in terms of developing and maintaining sustainable forests.This paper studied Japan's forest utilization and deforestation history and consequences resulted from forest exploitation in the past by looking through Japanese forest culture, the forest changes and forestry development in the history, as well as Japanese forestry administration during different periods of times. From this study, following conclusions have been reached:1. The main factors that caused deforestation in ancient times were: (1) use of metal tools; (2) Construction rush with traditional and religion styles encouraged by the ruling classes, such as temples, Jinjia palace, and emperor buildings; (3) forest consumption caused by frequent move of nation's capital; (4) diversified application of forest products such as boats, wood carvings, and firewood, etc.; (5) wars and social chaos; and (6) indirect impact of international economic and cultural communications.2. The consequences of forest exploitation in Japan's ancient history were: (1)shortage of wood supply; (2) intensified social conflict; (3) frequent forest fires; (4) the over harvesting and over use of forest resources led to environment deterioration, which severely affected people's lives and hindered economic development. On the other hand, the deterioration of environment also alarmed people of the importance of ecosystem in people's life and germinated thoughts of protecting resources and environment.3. The historic reasons that Japan's forest survived and sustained until today can be summarized as follows: (1) Japan's latitudinal spread and weather conditions advantaged Japan in forest protection; (2) the "passive management system" relived pressure on forest land and averted further damage to forest; (3) poor harvesting technology; (4) self-isolation policy and stable society; (5) the modernization and widespread application of silvicultural techniques accelerated the development of forest plantations; (6) emergence of early ecological view; (7) Japanese forest religion played a certain part of role in forest protection; (8) the occurrence of "maximum utilization" (or "production determine sale ") mode helped to avoid further deterioration in forest; (9) the implementation of a variety of award policies encouraged people to plant trees.The ruling classes throughout Japan's history provided enormous supports to forestry development, from tree nursery, plantation, forest management, road construction, to marketing (wood storage and pier construction) etc. Through over one thousand years' experience of "passive forest management system" and the execution of "aggressive forest...