Creating a new power balance between lumber market shippers and buyers with the idea of "regional economic circulation and carbon neutrality".
Updated by Yasunao Kobayashi on July 18, 2025, 10:20 PM JST
Yasuhisa KOBAYASHI
Alpha Forum, Inc.
President of Alpha Forum, Inc. and Steering Committee Member of the Platinum Forest Industry Initiative. Ltd. in 2001, taking advantage of the company's venture support program. In September 2023, he received the Wood Use System Research Association Award.
The percentage of domestic timber in demand for lumber has recovered to over 40%. This can be attributed to the fact that more forests are being harvested or are past their prime, and to the effects of measures implemented by the Forestry Agency and others. Why are trees that are in the process of being harvested not being harvested? It is because they are not profitable and not profitable, but "on what basis do you think they are not profitable and not profitable? The future will change depending on this question. Here, we will focus on the "market sales" that have determined the value of the trees.
Even today, the "lumber market" has a significant impact on the "market price" of lumber transactions and serves as an indicator. The timber market is broadly divided into the log market and the product market. Logs are sold at log fairs, which are often operated by forestry cooperatives or prefectural forestry union federations. Product markets deal in square timber, sawn timber, and in some cases, laminated timber. In a compound market, the market is operated on the basis of the space rented to the traders and the value of the traders' transactions, while in a single market, the market is a place for shippers and buyers to meet and receive a certain percentage of the transaction value as a commission. The log market is basically a single-entry market.
The shippers in the log market are forestry cooperatives and forestry companies, and the buyers are lumber companies and others. Until about 1970, the mainstream of houses were Japanese-style rooms with straight walls (the pillars were visible inside the room). In contrast, large walls (in which the pillars are hidden from view inside the walls) were used. The composition of the market continues to be that the number of Japanese-style rooms is decreasing in conjunction with the quantitative expansion of imported lumber, and the number of imported lumber is increasing because the number of Japanese-style rooms is decreasing.
The wood used for Japanese-style rooms included pillars, ceiling panels, nagashiri (long posts), kamoi (door frames), and stile and rail, all of which were required to have a beautiful grain. Knotless wood was preferred, and for pillars, knotless on all four sides and rectangular knotless (no knots on both adjacent sides) were required. Orders were also placed for shibuuchi, a type of wood used in the entry angles of Japanese-style rooms, in which only a 3-centimeter-long section of the wood was free of knots.
Trees have been grown in such a way that knots are not visible in wood products and do not appear. This required "pruning" in the process of growing the trunk. It was also important to grow the trees straight, and in particular, the difference between the log's original end (the cut closer to the root) and the end (the cut closer to the top of the tree) should have been small. For this reason, they planted as many as 3,000 saplings per hectare and let them grow in competition with each other, thinning the trees when the trunks had thickened to a certain degree. The thinning was done to remove unnecessary trees and increase the value of the remaining trees.
Repeated pruning and thinning required a lot of time, effort, and expense, but the price of a log from which many knotless products could be obtained was more than ten times the current price. If this is the case, we will take the time and effort. Japanese cedar and Japanese cypress have distinctive coloration, oiliness, and grain tightness depending on where they are grown, and if they continued to be highly valued in the market, they became established as brand-name timber.
Until the 1960s, market sales required shippers to ask to sell their products at the market, and the main task of the market sales staff was to ask the shippers (≒self-cut forest owners ⋀ mountain owners) to sell their products at the market. The shippers could choose the market sale that could sell at the highest price possible. The upstream side was strong. Children who were 15 to 20 years old in the 1960s and watched their parents, who were shippers, are now around 80 years old. Those who were shippers in the 80s now have the "good times" etched in their minds. Now, here's the problem...
When a company tries to improve the efficiency of forestry by consolidating forests in a certain area, a small number of people still say, "We won't cut the trees at such a price; we will grow them until they become more expensive. We will grow it until it becomes more expensive. While I am not saying there is zero chance of this, it is unlikely that the price of logs will increase more than tenfold. If you put them on the market, you can always get cash for them. If the shipper does not like the price at the auction, the shipper can buy it back (ex-rights). There will be a commission for the auction. Since the trees will not sell at the asking price anyway, they will not be cut down and the owner will not take care of the forest. At the market sale, the shipper will say, "Please, Mr. Buyer, please raise the price a little more, please purchase it somehow. The balance of power between shippers and buyers has reversed, and the power of shippers has become very small.
The number of carpenters who can properly perform the woodworking technique (drawing a plan, marking, and using a chisel and planer) has also decreased. There will be no revival of the Japanese-style room. This means that the need for knotless lumber and the need for logs that can be used to make thick pillars will not return. Both forest owners and lumber companies need to recognize this reality. The prefectural forestry companies, municipal forestry companies, and forestry companies that have been operating on behalf of forest owners for decades need to reevaluate the current situation. Even in forests that can yield medium-sized logs (8" (24cm) or so in diameter at the end), which are very popular in the log market, there is often a policy of thickening logs based on a long-logging season policy. When thinning, shouldn't the company also take the initiative in "appropriate present accounting according to the thinning ratio" instead of "increasing the value of the remaining trees"? There is also the fact that the unit price of logs declines when the end of the log exceeds 40 cm.
How can we solve the deep-rooted problems of the postponement structure? Both the supply and demand sides of lumber should think together about "local economic cycles and carbon neutrality. Forests are currently undergoing a review of their value in terms of carbon dioxide absorption. Most of the price of lumber is the "cost of transportation," and "transportation emits carbon dioxide. If we consider Scope 3, we cannot say that imported timber emits more carbon dioxide than imported timber, but we can ask, "How much carbon dioxide does this product need to emit to make it here? Can't it be transported here?" The region should always be thinking about the following. If you think about it for a moment, you will realize that we can live and work with the mountain forests that make up the majority of the region.
We believe that it would be good if the number of communities that have increased the number of friends who think it is "shameful" and "embarrassing" to purchase and use products that have been emitting carbon dioxide increased. The balance between shippers and buyers of logs sold at the market will also be in the right direction, and this will serve as the foundation for the development of a prosperous region. The future is bleak for regions where the population is too large for the forest area and forest accumulation. It would be good if local taxes could be increased tenfold and balanced by the purchase of local carbon dioxide emission credits, but will Tokyo residents disperse when it becomes clear that money cannot solve the problem?
It is not enough to just pretend to realize the probability that we must accelerate the forest circular economy in time. (Yasunao Kobayashi, President, Alpha Forum, Inc. and Steering Committee Member, Platinum Forest Industry Initiative)
