A view from within the forest: The impacts of socio-political change on mountain villages in early modern Shinano

Eric Cunningham Paper one

Master of Arts, plan B Department of Anthropology

University of Hawai‘i Spring, 2007

Introduction

Humans define their environments

culturally and negotiate them through power.

Therefore, anthropogenic environments

overlap and conflicts arise; one group’s home

is another group’s resource. How does the

emergence of modern socio-political systems

impact human-environment interactions on a

local scale? I address this question through

an examination of the Shinano region

(modern-day Nagano prefecture) of central

Japan (Fig. 1). Adopting a historical

perspective, I attempt to trace the evolution of local cultural ecologies in response to the

broader environmental changes that accompanied the emergence of the Japanese state. I

argue that the Meiji government’s annexation of forestlands created a shift in the

management practices of mountain villages in Shinano and the effects of this event have

reverberated through time to negatively impact the human ecologies of modern day

upland areas.

Fig. 1: Map showing Shinano (Nagano Prefecture), Edo (Tokyo) and the Kinai Basin (Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto) (map by author)

I use the term ‘Japan’ to identify a region rather than a nation-state in order to

avoid the theoretical trappings that come with envisioning Japan as a historically stable,

unified, and homogenized entity. Employing Bennett’s (1976, 1993) concept of

adaptations as socio-cultural processes contested at differing temporal and spatial scales,

I orient my analysis from the perspective of local communities to understand the

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successes and failures of adaptive behaviors within the context of remarkably changing

social and natural environments. I argue that the strategies employed by government

elites accompanying the emergence of the Japanese nation state in the Meiji Era (1868-

1912) conflicted with those operating at the community level. Thus, the cultural

adaptations of rural upland villages in Shinano began to be undermined by the strategies

of the national government.

Mountains and Forests in Japan

Mountain forests are ubiquitous across the Japanese archipelago. Japan’s

metropolitan areas have grown on coastal plains, while the remainder of the country

consists mostly of a series of abrupt north-south running mountain chains. Arable land is

scarce and agricultural fields often run adjacent to, and at times up and into, the forested

mountains. Japan’s geographical setting, coupled with a mix of moist monsoonal air in

the summer and plentiful snowfall in the winter has allowed for a variety of tree species

to thrive on these precipitous mountains (Table 1).

Table 1: Common Tree Species of Japan

Japanese name Scientific name Common name

sugi 杉 Cryptomeria japonica Japanese cedar

hinoki 檜 Chamaecyparis obtuse Hinoki cypress

kuromatsu 黒松 Pinus thunbergii Japanese black pine

Conifer/ softwoods

akamatsu 赤松 Pinus densiflora Japanese red pine

tsuga 栂 Tsuga sieboldii/diversifolia

Southern Japanese hemlock Northern Japanese hemlock

Broadleaf/ hardwoods

koyamaki 高野槙 Sciadopitys verticillata Japanese umbrella pine

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The presence of forests within Japan’s mountainous regions is so widespread that

the words for forest (mori 森) and mountain (yama 山) are often used interchangeably.

Mountain forests account for approximately two thirds of land-cover in Japan (Iwai 2002,

Knight 2000a), making forests an integral part of the Japanese landscape. Through time

and across space the relationship between human communities and mountains forests has

converted through a variety of different forms, resulting in the Japanese landscape seen

today.

Japan has been labeled midori-no-rettō 緑の列島 (the green archipelago) in

recent years, and touted as an exemplar of forest conservation among developed nations.

The name is apt, as anyone who has visited Japan and seen its ever-present forested hills

can attest. However, like so many aspects of modern Japan, there is much that lays

concealed by the image of the green archipelago. An aim of this paper is to reveal what

lies behind the lush green of Japan’s upland areas.

Endangered Communities

Descending from one of central Japan's forested mountains, the first sign of

human presence one is likely to find is a small shrine demarcating a special tree, a certain

rock, or the entrance to the mountain itself. Soon there will be more signs of human

activities, such as a dry field used for cabbage or a rice paddy cutting into the forested

hillside. Alternately, one may encounter a small temple struggling to fight back the

encroaching trees and underbrush, or empty homes with weedy grasses sprouting from

roof tiles. Such scenery begins to tell the tale of forest histories in Japan and of the

human lives involved in these histories. It is through the lens of these mountain villages

that I would like to examine forest histories in Japan’s central highlands, in order to

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illuminate the story of village residents who have long remained obscured by the

towering cities and economic miracles of modern Japan.

Looking at Japan today, one might easily conclude that the end of WWII

essentially marked the end of Japan’s rural areas. Since the end of the war Japan has

steadily increased the amount of food products imported annually, making it the world’s

largest importer of agricultural products (MAFF 2005). Although the numbers have

dropped a bit in recent years, Japan also remains one of the world’s largest importers of

timber (Seo and Taylor 2003). Obviously these trends have not boded well for rural

communities, which depend on national markets in order to sell their products

(McDonald 1996, McDonald 2000). Accordingly, rural communities in Japan have

rapidly declined in the post-war era. This decline has spurred a number of government

policies aimed at revitalizing rural areas; none of which has been particularly effective

(Knight 1994, McDonald 1996).

Fig. 2: An unmanaged forest in Osaka (photo by author)

Population and production declines in mountain areas have caused major changes

in human/forest ecologies with many once managed forests

being abandoned, leaving them to grow toward succession

and erasing the boundary between human settlements and

deeper forest. Somewhat counter-intuitively, these impacts

have been exacerbated by post-war reforestation efforts,

which have been hailed as a national achievement. Villagers

in Japan’s upland regions, however, increasingly experience

nearby forests as threats (Knight 2000b) (Fig. 2). Other

forests, like the Arashiyama National Forest in Kyoto (Fig. 3)

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Fig. 3: A managed forest in Arashiyama (photo by author)

offer examples of landscapes that have been

strictly managed for aesthetic purposes for

hundreds of years (Fukamachi et al. 2000). The

stark contrasts in these two forest types reflect

differing historical relationships between forests

and human communities. Historical shifts in

forest composition and extent not only have

serious implications for human communities, but also for the diversity of wildlife

associated with them (Knight 2000b, Knight 2003, Takeuchi et al. 2003) from butterflies

(Natsuhara 1999) to Japanese macaques (Izumiyama, Mochizuki, and Shiraishi 2003)

In recent year there has also developed in Japanese society a nostalgic discourse

concerning rural areas, which has painted them as bastions of the “real Japan”, idyllic

communities where the spirit of the nation resides. For example, a 2005 report from the

Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries states that, “Rural communities

have borne a variety of roles, besides the aspect of agricultural production, such

as the preservation of traditional culture. . .” (MAFF 2005). Revitalization efforts have

tended to draw on this discourse, with many communities seeking to manage forests as

tourist sites (Ivy 1995, Knight 2000a, Moon 1997). These misguided policies, discourses,

and revitalization efforts, which have their roots in the emergence of a national

government in the Meiji Restoration, have come to obscure the causes of Japan’s modern

rural crisis. Therefore, understanding this state of crisis requires an examination of the

transformation of landscapes through time.

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Historical Ecology

Studies in historical ecology have shown that modern environments have been

shaped in profound ways by past human activities (Balée 2006). At times, landscape

transformation has occurred at such length and intensity that it has become difficult to

delineate an original ‘natural’ environment (of course the human/nature distinction itself

is problematic, see Thomas 2001). While we cannot recreate landscapes of the past, it is

vital that we understand the processes that have helped shape the landscapes we

encounter today. Looking to Japan’s past can offer insights into historical chains of

causation that link past events with modern degradation, while at the same time providing

examples of ecologically sound land-use patterns that developed at different points in

time.

Investigating the historical ecology of modern landscapes also holds valuable

information about past sociopolitical processes. By identifying the ‘signatures’ of

particular land-use regimes, we can discern the roles that power, privilege, and access

have played in shaping landscapes. Ingold (Ingold 1993) suggests the adoption of a

‘dwelling perspective’, whereby we may begin to gain an appreciation of the actors

whose social activities have given shape to landscapes. Studies of historical ecology,

therefore, also offer insights into the lives of landscape ‘dwellers’. National stories of

modern Japan obfuscate the mixture of cultural groups that once occupied the archipelago.

Illuminating this cultural heterogeneity is an equally important pursuit for studies of

Japan’s ecological history.

Examining forest histories offers insights into negotiations of power that occurred

among different groups in the past. Various socio-cultural groups have ascribed different

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values to forests in Japan throughout history, which has influenced the way they interact

with forest environments. Correlating particular sociopolitical systems of forest

utilization with patterns of ecological change offers insights into the ecological

consequences of various systems of social and political interaction. These correlations in

turn allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the human ecology of the crisis

facing Japan’s rural areas today.

Shinano

Shinano 信濃 came into existence as a province around the 8th century1, as rulers

in the capital Nara began to formulate a system of territories, what they called koku or

kuni (国). The Shinano province occupied most of the area of present day Nagano

prefecture (see Fig. 4 below). During the Nara period, the province was divided into ten

districts, each ruled by a clan-based governor. A class of feudal lords began to form

during the Heian Period by accumulating wealth and taking control of farmlands; these

men eventually became the samurai class of Shinano. The Edo Period brought

opportunities, as new roads, such as the nakasendo 中山道 connecting Kyoto with Edo

(Tokyo), allowed for the movement of goods by horse. Shinano did not solidify as a

social or political space until the Meiji period when it was divided in to two

administrative units, Nagano in the north and Chikuma in the south. In 1876, when fire

destroyed its municipal building, rather than rebuild, the Meiji government decided to

simply divide Chikuma among neighboring prefectures, with Nagano subsuming the

biggest area (Wigen 1998).

1 Table 2 provides an overview of Japan’s major historical periods along with associated political organization and patterns of lands-use.

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Table 2: Historical Periods* of Political Organization and Land-use in Japan *all dates are approximate and listed as A.D.

Shinano’s disconnection as a political and social unit was due in part to its

mountainous geography. The area stands at the convergence of Japan’s three biggest

mountain ranges, the Hida, Kiso and Akashi, each boasting peaks between 2,000 and

3,000 meters. Human settlements were located in intermontane basins, which also

limited social and political interaction between communities within the province. Socio-

economic exchanges tended to flow from mountain basins down valley to the nearest

coastal lowland (Wigen 1995).

From at least the Nara period, peasants in Shinano engaged primarily in wet rice

and dry-land agriculture, and also gathered non-timber products from local forests.

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Specialization came later in the Edo period, with peasants producing a range of regional

goods, such as: textiles, lacquerware, and horses, to take advantage of expanding trade

networks. Cool summers and extremely cold winters with heavy snow produced a

variety of unique material adaptations such as snowshoes, sleds and rice straw coats. The

people of Shinano were known for being unique in their independent spirit and nativist

attitudes. The Kojiki 古事記, Japan’s oldest historical book, describes the people of

Shinano as being rebellious and “beyond the reaches of Japanese civilization” (quoted in

Kimitada 1974:70).

My analysis focuses primarily on the Kiso

木曽 and the Tenryū 天竜 valleys in southern

Shinano (Fig. 4). Though close in proximity, the

Kiso and the Tenryū are separated by the Kiso

Mountains, meaning that for much of their

histories the two valleys have been distinct

socially, economically and politically. The

valleys also differ in their physical geography and

floral makeup. The Kiso is a short, steep valley,

blanketed on either side by coniferous forests and

drained by a shallow, fast-moving river, leaving

little room for agricultural land and human settlements. The Tenryū, on the other hand, is

a broader, u-shaped valley encompassing the flood plain of the slower moving Tenryū

River. Agricultural fields are quite large and fill the valley bottom, while the hillsides

boast a mix of broadleaf and coniferous forests.

Fig. 4: Shinano’s Kiso and Tenryū valleys. (map by author)

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Traditional Adaptive Strategies in Upland Shinano

Throughout Japan’s history, diversity has been a key element in the continuation

of healthy natural and human environments. The geographical location of the islands,

extending from the southern tip of Kyushu at about 31° north latitude to the northern part

of Hokkaido at 45° north latitude, combines with differing ocean currents and the twin

effects of warm, wet monsoonal winds from the south and cold, dry winds from Siberia

in the north to create a variety of microclimates throughout the islands, encouraging a

range of human adaptive strategies. Due in part to physical geography, human

communities in Japan (particularly upland villages), have been largely isolated,

independent and self-sufficient for much of their histories. Though local trade networks

at times linked regional domains, larger trade networks linking upland communities to

metropolitan areas didn’t emerge until the Edo period (and even then only through major

hubs).

This regional patterning also contributed to the development of a variety of

unique adaptations for obtaining staple resources. For example, Kitagawa, et al.

(Kitagawa et al. 2004) have used pollen analysis to suggest an adaptive switch in the

Hida highlands (just west of the Kiso Valley) c. 1800 A.D. towards forest management

practices (hansaibai) to promote the growth of horse chestnut trees as a food source in

response to Edo period famines. Similarly, Wigen (1995) illustrates that prior to the rise

of the Tokugawa regime and the establishment of official trade routes, the Kiso and

Tenryū valleys had established only regional trade routes to supplement locally produced

foods, suggesting that they were largely self-sufficient.

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Due to climatic and geographic variation, local communities also depended on

diversity in the number and types of resources they utilized. The Japanese poet,

Shimazaki Tōson, writes of a journey into the mountains near Komoro in northern

Shinano at the turn of the century. His account of a day-long journey into the mountains,

lists no less than twenty-six different varieties of plant, tree and animal utilized by the

people living there, including larch, squash and several kinds of millet (1991 [1912]); on

a separate occasion he notes that, “The farmers can recognize all kinds of medicinal

herbs” (1991 [1912]:60). Besides agricultural crops, upland villagers also depended on

local forestlands in order to obtain a variety of products necessary for daily life, including

building material, fuel, green fertilizer, fodder, and wild foods.

Patterns of forest use among small farmers across 19 century Japan revolved

around village-level social relationships, which served to regulate communal utilization.

This style of common forest management has been labeled iriachi 入会地, meaning

“common-entry land” (Kijima, Sakurai, and Otsuka 2000, McKean 1982). In the Edo era

iriaichi existed apart from lands owned by provincial lords or the larger

th

Tokugawa

bakufu 幕府2. Iriai forests were managed at the village level, which was traditionally

known as the buraku 部落 . Although there is debate as to the exact historical

characteristics of buraku, they are generally thought to have existed as self-organized

sociopolitical entities based on reciprocal relationships among a community with shared

values (Irokawa 1975). Village-based committees managed common lands and

designated when, where, and how much of a particular resource could be used.

2 The term bakufu 幕府 refers to military/political units that controlled various parts of Japan throughout the feudal period. The term literally means “tent government” because mobile groups of soldiers lived in tents. The Tokugawa bakufu ruled most of the island of Honshū during the Edo Period.

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Collective work was also organized within the buraku to accomplish such tasks as bridge

building and forest burning to promote feed grasses (Kijima, Sakurai, and Otsuka 2000).

In these situations, ownership of forestland per se, was less important than usufruct rights.

This was particularly true in Shinano’s Tenryū valley, where early deforestation led to a

variety of plantation arrangements for producing timber. An example were nenkiyama 年

季山 , which were forests planted in order to produce timber that had already been

purchased. Landowners, and perhaps other community members, were free to use the

deadfall and other resources in the forest while maintaining the planted trees which were

delivered to the paying party when they reached maturity (Totman 1989). In sum, as

long as upland communities maintained the right to use forest resources, who actually

owned the land was minimally important.

The foregoing section briefly reviewed some adaptive strategies that upland

communities employed in Japan’s past to illuminate several key points. First, villagers

used adaptive strategies that varied spatially and temporally depending on the features of

the local environment, both social and natural. Second, diversity also characterized

resource use within a particular region, with a variety of plant crops cultivated and

various non-timber resources foraged from local forests. Finally, use of forest resources

was managed at the village-level through socio-cultural institutions to prevent

exploitation that might compromise future productivity. These adaptive strategies had

developed at the local level within unique socio-cultural and environmental contexts and

so in the Edo and Meiji periods, as powerful regimes coalesced and took control of the

Japanese landscape, local communities began to see their adaptive strategies

compromised.

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Shinano Forests in the Edo Period (1603-1868)

Through the Nara and Heian periods, an

emerging class of elites began undertaking

monumental building projects (Fig. 5) in the Kinai

Basin (modern-day Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara, see

Fig. 1). After exhausting local timber supplies,

elites went looking elsewhere for adequate forests

(Fig. 6). Though geographically distant, by the

late Muromachi period, elites had extended their reach to Shinano’s Kiso and Tenryū

valleys, which were attractive because of their ample supplies of large, quality trees

(Totman 1989). By the beginning of the Edo Period,

the forests of the Kiso and Tenryū valleys, which

had become primary sources of lumber for the

Tokugawa government, had begun to falter. As the

Tokugawa bakufu continued to consolidate power,

they focused on protecting timber resources.

Regulations went into effect to officially close

forests, with the intent that they would be used only

as dictated by the bakufu government.

Forests deemed valuable as timber resources were

designated tomeyama (留め山), which forbade any

cutting, felling, or collecting of wood within the

forest unless authorized by the bakufu government.

Fig. 5: Tōdaiji (東大寺) in Nara. The structure standing today is smaller than the original (photo by author)

Fig. 6: Map showing areas logged through time. The earliest logging occurred in the Kinai Basin and then extended to slands. Shinano was being heavily loggedthe 18

urrounding by

th century (Totman 1989)

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The rich forest resources of the Kiso valley were actually first annexed prior to

the Edo period around 1590, by a leader of the Toyotomi clan, Hideyoshi, who had come

to control much of Japan through military conquest. He began to exact tribute from

villages in the Kiso valley in the form of timber. After Hideyoshi’s death in 1598,

Tokugawa Ieyasu took control of Japan’s main island of Honshu and rose to the rank of

Shogun. He improved transportation routes connecting Edo and Shinano and

strengthened bakufu control over the forest resources of the Kiso and Tenryū valleys, so

that by 1600 the hills of Shinano had been largely stripped (Totman 1989). By 1665 a

forest management system had been implemented for the devastated Kiso valley. In

order to protect timber reserves, government agents were posted in the area and assigned

the task of managing the forests (Iwamoto 2002). The bakufu viewed forests simply as

timber resources to be utilized efficiently in support of construction projects (Shinano’s

forests tended to thin when fires broke out in the Tokugawa capital of Edo). In contrast,

for local villagers forests were sources of fertilizer, firewood, wild herbs and other foods

(Totman 1985). Forests were also godly domains, home to ghosts and spirits, which

demanded respect (Fumiko and Williams 2001, Grapard 2000, Swanson 1981).

Shinano mountain villages did not welcome these new Tokugawa government

regulations because their livelihoods depended on the use of common forest resources.

The tension these new regulations created is evidenced by the number of written

statements submitted from across Japan to the bakufu government requesting usage-rights

for various forest areas (Totman 1989), and also by peasant riots which increased in the

closing years of the Tokugawa regime (Vlastos 1986). However, because of a dearth of

written material regarding the farming and forestry activities of Japan’s commoners in the

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Tokugawa Era it is difficult to examine the ecological impacts these changes had on local

human/forest relations in any great detail. What is important to note for the period is the

antagonism that began to grow between two very different ideologies and methodologies

regarding forests and forest utilization. These differences set the stage for later conflicts

as Japan witnessed the emergence of a new government with revolutionary implications.

The Restoration

A complex combination of events led to the official end of the Tokugawa regime

on November 9 , 1867, when the last of the Tokugawa shogunates pledged his loyalty to

the Emperor Meiji. The restoration of imperial rule to Japan is

th

known as the meiji ishin

明治維新 or the Meiji Restoration. This political watershed had several major impacts

on upland forests and villages in Shinano. Whereas bakufu leaders had ruled through a

loose network of key alliances and strategic resources, Meiji officials sought to establish

a nation with centralized control and detailed knowledge of occurrences across the

country. Thus, through a series of surveys, land consolidations and political and

ideological reconfigurations, the Meiji government set about constructing the Japanese

nation. Through their incorporation into a national system of management, the forests of

the archipelago were to become, much like the people themselves, “Japanese”. In other

words, forests across Japan were drawn into a new adaptive strategy situated within a

web of macro-scale political and economic forces, and structured by modernist ideologies.

At the same time, within the forests, upland communities that depended on the forests for

their livelihoods faced new adaptive challenges—how to survive without the forests?

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Claiming state forests

Although politically the island of Honshu had been more or less unified throughout the

Edo period, I have argued that regional autonomy and differences in production and

environmental interaction were still pronounced. The Kiso and Tenryū valleys in

Shinano had both been claimed by the bakufu as timber reserves, but after some

negotiation local usufruct had been maintained in many areas through a variety of socio-

political arrangements. This is not to say that life was particularly pleasant for small

farmers in these valleys, but incursions by the Tokugawa elite had been tempered through

petitioning by upland communities; often forested lands were monitored, though not

closed entirely (whether officially or unofficially) to common peoples.

Semi-autonomous forest use by regional communities did not however fit with the

goals of Meiji leaders. They sought power over a new nation, which meant they had to

first define a nation capable of being controlled. As the bloody past of the Japanese

archipelago attests, consolidating power in the islands was an ambitious undertaking that

required the ability to exert control over a geographically, politically and socially diverse

landscape. In the Edo period, Tokugawa leaders had not governed a nation, but rather

had ruled a network of domains, so there was little structure for the Meiji government to

build a nation upon. Therefore, Meiji leaders looked to Western countries for

technological, political and ideological inspiration. Envisioning a nation entailed

simplifying the landscape through a process of labeling and the standardization a range of

geographical entities from shrines to villages and mountains to forests. By the 1880s

79,000 villages had been reduced to a more bureaucratically manageable 14,000 (Waswo

1988). Likewise, in 1879 a national system was developed for ranking Shinto shrines; 54

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major shrines were designated to receive monetary support from the government and

176,722 were defined as official shrines to be funded by local communities (Waswo

1988). By 1871 the Meiji Imperial Army had succeeded in abolishing all authority held

by provincial lords, seizing all Edo period domains and creating a series of prefectures

and districts. A comparison of a map produced in the Edo period to one created during

the Meiji Era illustrates the effects this process of bureaucratization had on conceptions

of the Shinano landscapes (Fig. 7 and Fig. 8).

Fig. 7: Map of the Shinano region in the late Edo Period. (Ino, T. 1745-1818. "Shinano," in Dai Nihon enkai yochi zensu (Complete Survey of the

anese Coast). National Diet LJap

The claiming of

forestlands by the Meiji

government created shifts

in management practices

that have reverberated

through time to negatively

impact the ecologies of

modern day upland

communities. At the heart

of these ecological

transformations was the restricting of forest use and management at the village level. By

the Meiji period, the forests of the Kiso and Tenryū valleys had developed unique

ecologies that included persistent low-level disturbance by humans. Therefore, removing

the influence of patterns of human utilization from forest ecosystems was a significant

alteration that had a variety of immediate and extended impacts.

Fig. 8: Map of Nagano Prefecture. Ando, R. 1907. "Saishin chosa Nagano-ken zenzu : kaisei shichoson," Tokyo : Hakuaikan.

ibrary.

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Essential to understanding the effects that the Meiji Restoration had on forests in

Shinano is the concept of iriaiken 入会権, or communal-access rights, as mentioned

briefly before. The ability of small farmers to access local forests had been a cornerstone

of the social, political and ecological well being of upland communities in Shinano for

hundreds of years. The forests of the Kiso and Tenryū valleys had by this time been

heavily utilized, with many areas having been completely deforested on more than one

occasion. Mutual interest in forest resources had lead to tentative relationships among

small farmers, provincial lords, and the Tokugawa bakufu over usufruct. Meiji officials

had a different vision for Japan’s forests, which they began to take control of in 1874

through the imposition of land taxes (Toshitaka 1968). Western ideas of private property

were imposed, requiring that proof of ownership be submitted in order to maintain forest

holdings. Notions of private property were foreign to local villagers who were used to

the customs of communal land use managed by the buraku community. However, more

damaging to upland communities than issues of actual ownership, was the interruption of

access (iriai), a practice which villagers depended on for their livelihoods and which had

structured forest-use for generations. Policies denying usufruct date back to 1878, when

a system was established to control hiire 火入れ, the controlled burning of forests and

grasslands (Toshitaka 1968). A few years later, with the establishment of nationwide

forestry offices in 1886, prohibitions against entering government forests began to be

more strictly enforced (Toshitaka 1968).

Controlled burning was a common and widespread custom in Japan until it began

to be restricted by the Meiji government. Anthropogenic burning has been shown to have

profound impacts on forest ecologies through the promotion of particular floral and

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faunal species adapted to open environments (Pyne 1998). In Shinano, controlled

burning was used to clear forest underbrush in order to promote feed grasses and also to

create ash as fertilizer for fields. Prohibitions on burning in state forests likely had

several negative effects. First, an increase in forest litter build-up, which would have

been exacerbated by prohibitions the gathering of firewood and green fertilizer,

multiplies the frequency and intensity of forest fires (Parsons and DeBenedetti 1979,

Shang et al.). Second, loss of controlled burning in forest environments promotes

secondary growth, creating denser forests and closing the light gaps that many plant

species depend on for survival (Wayman and North 2007). In addition, as Knight has

pointed out, the maintenance of forest boundary lines is viewed as a vital activity by

modern day villagers in Japan (Knight 1997); the same was likely true during Meiji times.

In addition, because unmanaged forests are a threat to crops due to wildlife pestilence

(Knight 2000b, 2003), maintaining open forest environments next to agricultural fields

was vital for upland communities.

Maintaining boundaries between villages and forests was also critical to the well

being of many nonhuman mammalian species whose habitat were located in the oku-no-

mori 奥の森, or ‘back of the forest’. In modern Japan, urban expansion coupled with the

loss of managed forests has decreased the habitat range of several large mammalian

species, bringing them into closer contact with mountain villages and humans (Knight

2003). Shrinking habitat size and access to human food sources are particularly

detrimental to Japanese macaque populations (Hanya et al. 2006, Izumiyama, Mochizuki,

and Shiraishi 2003). Government sponsored incursions into forestlands had similar

effects as far back as the Edo period when forest clearing for soybean production in one

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village led to farmers competing for food sources

with wild Japanese boars (inoshishi 猪) (Walker

2001). Such incursions increased during the Meiji

period as lumber was sought to support massive

industrialization projects. The Meiji

government’s control and consumption of forest

resources severely undermined existing land-use

patterns that had been an essential part of

mountain forest ecologies.

Ecological changes in Shinano's mountain

forest landscapes during the Meiji era were

profound and far-reaching. The impacts of these

changes were intensified by the restructuring of

human/forest relationships through the

nationalization of forestland and the limitation of

usufruct rights. These changes were further

codified through the reworking of traditional

values and the invention of ideological discourses,

creating a new national landscape in which

forestlands began to be valued as commodities.

Upland forests and their associated village

communities were drawn into the adaptive strategy of a newly defined nation that

differed from strategies that had developed over time in the uplands. Consequently, after

Fig. 9: Edo Period woodblock print of Nakasendo road in the southern Kiso Valley (Hiroshige, A. 1834-1842. "45 Ochiai," in The Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kisokaido: Takenouchi-Hoeido (1st part) and Kinjudo (2nd part). Later editions published by Kinjudo.

Fig. 10: Photograph of a forested hillside in the southern Kiso Valley taken some time between 1883-1897 (Kinbei, K. "Miyanokoshi Tokuonji Temple," in MDatabase of Japanese Old PhotograBakumatsu-Meiji Period: Nagasaki University Library)

Nakasendo etadata phs In

Fig. 11: Photograph of bare mountains in southern Kiso Valley in 1900 (Anonymous. 1900. "Narai at the turn of the century," in Nakasendo Highway: A Journey to the Heart of Japan: R.T.A. Irving and Thomas A. Stanley.

20

the turn of the century, as Japan began down the path of industrialization, imperialism,

and warfare, upland forests were ever more voraciously consumed (Figs. 9-11).

Mountain forests and villages were now part of a national landscape and would have to

take on new challenges by developing novel adaptive strategies.

Villager responses

The restriction of iriaiken by the Meiji government ignited growing resentment

among poor farmers, which exploded in a series of reformation riots (yonaoshi ikki 世直

し一揆 ) across the country. In May, 1881 in the city of Matsumoto in Shinano, 15,000

residents protesting taxes and the incorporation of traditional provincial boundaries into

Nagano Prefecture began to riot against local Meiji officials (Wigen 1998). Farmers in

Gunma Prefecture, northeast of Shinano, demonstrated in 1881 against prohibitions on

entering traditional common lands by illegally gathering at the communal grass cutting

area of 82 villages. This demonstration eventually turned into a full-scale riot as well

(Toshitaka 1968). Finally, after the turn of the century, tenant farmer movements across

Japan began to protest against gōnō 豪農, wealthy households with ties to the Meiji

government that had maintained some private forestlands (Waswo 1988).

In response to frequent demonstrations and occasional outbreaks of violence, the

Meiji government adopted several measures to appease farmers, including: hiring forest

laborers, granting money to farmers, providing cheap fuel-wood, and establishing

custodial forests (Toshitaka 1968). Government intervention on behalf of upland

communities is a trend that has continued up to the present day. However, such

government responses did little then, as they do today, to compensate for the loss of

traditional practices of forest utilization.

21

Because the human ecology of mountain villages centered on the exploitation of

local forest resources, limits on user-rights to forestlands had a tremendous impact on the

ability of small farmers to maintain a quality of living. First and foremost, forests

provided firewood to light and heat homes and to cook food: essential needs for farmers.

Early Meiji prohibitions on entering state forests therefore forced poor farmers to

participate in illegal felling and other drastic measures to obtain this needed resource. In

his historical fiction, The Soil, Nagatsuka writes about the scarcity of firewood and his

main character's illegal removal of tree stumps from land he was hired to clear, which

later brings government authorities to his door:

To the west, just across the river, were forests upon forests. They surrounded every village and every bit of farmland, too. Here on the eastern side however, there were low-lying fields with villages scattered here and there among them. The only trees on this side of the river were planted around people's houses. Kanji had always known that the farmers on this side had hardly any firewood and had to save every scrap of straw and beanstalk for fuel. But this was the first time he had ever seen people hunting for driftwood in the sand. Only rarely did he set foot on this side of the river. Kanji had lots of firewood stacked up at home, and the more reclamation work he did the more he acquired (1989 [1912]:51).

There are also reports of refusal on the part of villagers to help extinguish forest fires and

even of the intentional setting of fires to ensure cheap wood from the sale of burnt timber

(Toshitaka 1968).

Sociopolitical changes that had begun in the Edo period and were accelerated

after the Meiji Restoration imposed a new framework for thinking about and utilizing

upland forestlands. This change had profound effect on the livelihoods of mountain

communities that had developed adaptive strategies based on the socially mediated use of

communal forests. The responses of upland villagers to these changes are illustrative of

22

their disruptiveness to the socio-natural environments that had evolved in upland regions

up to that point.

Conclusion:

At the heart of the current state of crises among rural communities in Shinano,

and elsewhere in Japan, is the breakdown of community-based sociopolitical systems,

which traditionally had mediated human/forest interactions. Upland communities were

supported and shaped through their interactions with unique the mountain forest

environments around them. For much of their histories, villages in the neighboring Kiso

and Tenryū valleys had maintained healthy environments despite heavy ecological

degradation at the hands of the Tokugawa regime. I have argued that this ecological

wellness was largely due to the local autonomy that marked sociopolitical relations in

Japan up until the Meiji Restoration.

Local autonomy didn't fit the ideological and political rubric that began to be

imposed on rural peoples across Japan in the late 19th century. Accordingly, state control

of forests in Shinano and elsewhere required a reworking of national perceptions as much

as it did a reorganization of forest boundaries. This two-pronged approach to the state

control of forests had several implications for the health of mountain village

environments in Shinano. While limiting local autonomy through new social policies, the

Meiji government created legitimacy by linking itself to traditional mythologies and

nesting these within a newly subdued countryside (Barshay 2004). This process of state

legitimization essentially erased the unique histories of local community land-use and

buraku systems of management and replaced it with a homogenized national myth of

23

traditional Japanese lifeways and values. Thus, local socio-natural environments became

nationalized and were expected to share in national interests and aims.

In Japan today, policies directed at revitalization and forest management have

continued to overlook this history, relying instead on variations of Meiji era national

stories, which conceive of rural areas in capitalist terms as being backwaters, rich in

tradition, but ultimately economically unviable. This erasure carries away with it a

wealth of histories, stories, environmental knowledge and expertise that grown from a

long span of human interactions with forest environments that resulted in adaptive

strategies capable of long-term sustainability.

It has been argued that the actions of the Tokugawa government in response to

major deforestation saved the Japanese archipelago from the environmental catastrophe

and social collapse that was the fate of the Asian continent. What this argument

overlooks is the heterogeneity that characterized the Japan region before the Meiji

Restoration. The interests that Tokugawa elites held for sustaining forest resources were

qualitatively different from that of villagers in Shinano’s upland areas. Likewise, the

strategies employed by these elites for maintaining forest resources differed greatly from

the socio-cultural systems that had developed in the uplands. Preservation policies

implemented by the Tokugawa regime, such as the establishment of tomeyama and the

limiting of iriai, impacted the adaptive behaviors of some upland communities, which in

turn began changing the way that human activities shaped the landscape. In its march to

industrialization the Meiji government also sought to control forest resources and it did

so with much more systemization and rigor. To ensure that resources would be available

24

for government sponsored efforts, the rights of local communities to utilize common

forestlands were abolished.

The historical emergence of the Japanese nation after the Meiji Restoration was

an event that negatively impacted the ability of upland communities to utilize local

resources. The formation of the Japanese state drew upland communities into a broader

system of social, political, and economic relationships, which sent them on new trajectory

leading to the crises we see in modern upland communities (Knight 1994, Knight 1997,

McDonald 1997, Seo and Taylor 2003). By examining the histories of Japan's common

people and their interactions with the lands they lived on, we can begin to rethink

strategies for renewing upland communities. Historical analyses allow us to identify both

adaptive and maladaptive processes, thus developing a perspective from which we can

begin to make recommendations concerning the future of human communities and

natural landscapes in the uplands of Shinano and elsewhere in Japan. Japan truly

deserves the title of midori-no-rettō--the green archipelago, but not at the cost of upland

communities that have lived with the forests for hundreds of years. In Japan, we miss the

full beauty of the forest if we never stop to take a look at the view from within.

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