indoor activities, and as such they allow the architectural space to be efficiently used for other purposes as well.
Brewing and fermentation at the cottage-industry scale do not consume large quantities of either fuel or freshwater, and their intermediate products are consumable or compostable. The equipment required is primarily wooden barrels and earthenware jars, both of which can be used for years if not decades; these activities do not significantly increase the household’s environmental footprint. Making charcoal for sale is a special case because it involves the direct consumption of limited forest resources, transforming wood from a highly efficient heat source into a less efficient but more easily transported one. It is essentially a gathering activity, and it provides the fuel supply for city dwellers, a large fraction of the population.
Of the industries described above, only silk production embodies extravagance in several areas: acres devoted to mulberry trees, large architectural structures for raising the worms and, consequently, large consumption of building timber for the purpose, a several-fold increase in fuel consumption for heat, and a large outlay of human labor.
Two additional cottage industries should be considered from the standpoint of fuel and resource use, namely smithing and pottery. At the home-industry scale, these activities require several times the amount of fuel a typical household uses, and so their presence decreases the share available to all. Smiths require an intense charcoal fire to be kept burning at all times, while potters consume vast amounts of firewood every few weeks when the clay is fired. Both industries depend upon nonrenewable primary materials, namely iron and potters’ clay. It may be surprising to think of clay as nonrenewable, but extracting clay is in fact a mining operation, albeit with shovels and relatively shallow pits. Sources of suitable quality are relatively rare and rights of access and use are contentious issues.
Good-quality pig iron must usually be transported great distances and has a high initial cost, but full use is made of its easy recyclability. Though many repairs to iron implements can be improvised at home, villagers require access to a smith, even if he devotes part of his day to farming as well. Having a local potter is less essential except in cases where the local economy and other cottage industries depend upon having a ready supply, and it is not surprising that potters tend to form specialized villages close to good sources of clay.
into the forest
Shinichi and the other residents of Aoyagi Village spend most of their time in and around their homesteads and fields, some of which occupy the lower hillsides. They frequently spend days a bit deeper in the mountains gathering food and fuel. But the villagers also participate periodically in logging activities that take them even deeper into the forest. While some of their farming activities provide for local needs, most of their rice finds its way to Edo and the other large cities. Similarly, the lumber they help produce is intended almost entirely for the urban market, linking the well-being of the city to the environmental health of the countryside even more closely.
In forestry, as in farming, an ethic of conservation and husbandry prevails. The forests around Shinichi’s village are farmed for lumber products in a way that satisfies both the subsistence needs of the farmers themselves and the cities’ voracious appetite for timber products.
Man has altered the balance of natural species in the archipelago, and the forest shows human influence clearly. Even at this point, very little is left in a virgin state, and the climax stands of sugi and hinoki trees that are so highly valued were mostly cut in the time of Shinichi’s distant ancestors. The culture and the economy prefer these straight, aromatic, close-grained, and easy-to-work conifers for building material, and so much of the effort of forestry has involved finding and nurturing the best ones, cutting and extracting them, and planting more in their stead. Other species are not ignored, however, and they have their uses and so are valuable and marketable. But sugi is the new king of the forest.
Natural forest growth is a cycle of succession, where grassland sponsors scrub, which gives way to broadleaf species, and, possibly, conifers. Prior to man’s arrival and for long thereafter, the native forests of central Japan were a mixture of deciduous broadleaf and conifer, and where broadleafs with their broad crowns dominated—chestnuts, oaks, laurel, beech—the understory, which received ample sunlight, was rich in grasses, shrubs, and other plants, while also providing niches for abundant fauna.
The broadleaf forest is by nature varied. Sugi and hinoki are taller and narrower than broadleaf trees, however, and grow more closely together, so the dark floor of a climax conifer forest is usually awash in fallen needles and ferns and little else. At higher elevations and in colder regions very little else will thrive, but when man first arrived in central Japan he found mostly broadleaf forests, liberally interspersed with stands of conifers.
Japan first experienced localized deforestation and its ill effects long ago, when the rulers of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries virtually stripped the surrounding valleys to build their capitals at Nara (Heijo-kyo) and Kyoto (Heian-kyo). Their buildings were vast and luxurious and squandered immense quantities of first-growth timber, while gigantic bronze sculptures like the Great Buddha at Todaiji consumed entire hardwood forests for smelting. In aggregate, at this time and ever since, the commoners in towns and peasants in rural areas consumed more of the forest for their subsistence needs than did the ruling classes, but government-directed “command” forest clear-cutting regularly pushed the woodland environment beyond its ability to rebound healthily.
In many cases, the clear-cutting of coniferous woodland allowed healthier, more useful replacement growth to appear, as the natural replacement cycle leads to fast-growing broadleafs. These provide good fuel, their stumps and roots hinder erosion, and new shoots quickly emerge from the stumps, that can in time themselves be harvested. The undergrowth of this kind of replacement forest is ecologically rich and varied.
Unfortunately, because of overexploitation, and particularly the cutting of forests to make new farmland, in previous centuries this positive balance was rarely allowed to emerge. The needs of the peasants like Shinichi’s grandfather—who didn’t require many high-quality conifers but did need hardwood for fuel and forest litter for fertilizer as well as a variety of wild foods—began to collide head on with those of the rulers, who needed prime lumber. The government increasingly felt the need to close forests to peasant use, and it implemented prohibitions and penalties limiting harvesting, transportation, and consumption in clumsy attempts to conserve the resources.
A single hillside is expected to provide a large population with timber, firewood, fertilizer, and arable land, and though one can envision satisfying any two of these biomass needs reasonably, or three with difficulty, to meet all four would seem impossible. Now, however, the forests are producing more than ever before, and everyone, peasant and ruler alike, is getting pretty much what they need. Arrangements that allow long-term mixed use, with clearly defined rights and juridical recourse, have been implemented. Replacement silviculture techniques have been developed and widely disseminated. Conflicts between loggers and farmers over river use have been minimized. And consumption