Revealing the structure of poverty that leads to the deprivation of common lands
Updated by Kotaro Nagasawa on May 09, 2025, 11:36 AM JST
Kotaro NAGASAWA
（Platinum Initiative Network, Inc.
Born in Tokyo in 1958. （Engaged in research on infrastructure and social security at Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc. During his first few years with the company, he was involved in projects related to flood control, and was trained by many experts on river systems at the time to think about the national land on a 100- to 1,000-year scale. He is currently an advisor to Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc. He is also a part-time lecturer at Tokyo City University. Coauthor of "Introduction to Infrastructure," "New Strategies from the Common Domain," and "Forty Years After Retirement. D. in Engineering.
*Click here for the first part.
Reading Tokuji Chiba's "Hageyama no Kenkyu" (Study of Hageyama), a famous book discussing local forest overuse and its historical background (Part 1)
Here is another example from the Edo period, as described in Tokuji Chiba's "Study of Hagezan". The northeastern part of the Nobi Plain (Tono region) includes Seto (Aichi Prefecture) and Tajimi (Gifu Prefecture), which are known for their ceramics production, and many bald hills have existed in this region since ancient times. Dereke, a hired foreigner who visited the area in the early Meiji period (1868-1912), wrote that he "did not see a single tree or a single weed. The cause was explained by a professor of forestry at the University of Tokyo in the late Meiji period as deforestation as fuel for the pottery industry.
However, the author also has his doubts here. He says that logging for fuel for ceramic firing in this area is basically selective logging, which is unlikely to be the cause of such severe forest degradation.
Based on the data recorded in ancient documents, we estimated the consumption and production of fuel in the region and are confident that there was enough wood production in the region during the Edo period to provide for the needs of the region. In addition, the location of the ceramic industry area and the erosion control works to stop forest devastation do not overlap. This means that forest degradation may have nothing to do with fuel extraction for the pottery industry.
In reviewing the records of the villages concerned from this perspective, we found that from the 18th century onward, the demand for green manure and wood ash as fertilizer for the production of commercial agricultural products increased, and that the poor farmers collected trees and turf grass from the forest lands to meet this demand. Dereke also wrote, "People who have the right to join the community gather trees that grow on the slope of the mountain, and transport the new leaves to rice paddies and tea fields to use as fertilizer. This is in conjunction with the fact that bald hills occur in the wooded areas of the communities, and this book argues that the main cause of the destruction of the woodlands must be the excessive collection of trees and grass by the farmers in the wooded areas of the communities.
In relation to the ceramic industry, it has been pointed out that land where highly viscous ceramic clay is mined induces phenomena such as water springs and difficulties in underground infiltration, and as a result, soil erosion is more likely to occur. In fact, according to the results of a survey conducted at the Seto Experimental Forest of the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Agriculture, the amount of sediment discharged from bald hills and clay mined areas is overwhelmingly higher in the latter, leading to the inference that the impact of the ceramic industry on forest degradation in this area may be greater than that of deforestation for fuel from the mining of ceramic soil.
This book focuses primarily on the Edo period. The Edo period was a period of more than 200 years of peace and prosperity. Especially in the 17th century, urban development, development of new rice paddies, population growth, and the spread of commodity crops were notable phenomena. If we dare to organize the contents of this book in light of this, we may say that the structure of this book is as follows: (1) peace brings prosperity, (2) prosperity brings disparity, (3) disparity creates poverty, and (4) poverty causes the taking of common lands.
The author's image of industry destroying the environment for its own profit was close to the image he had in his head in the past. However, according to this book, the industry is surprisingly robust. For example, in the case of the salt manufacturing industry in Okayama, fuel is procured from private forest lands rather than from forest lands that are insecurely supplied by the public. The forest owners are committed to resource management in order to maintain the supply, and therefore, no devastation occurs. This book sees the Edo Period barrens as a direct result of the over-extraction of common lands, or, in modern terms, a tragedy of the commons, even though industrial development was behind the development.
This book was published in 1956, and there may be some inadequacies in the discussion due to historical and material limitations. In fact, in 1991, the author himself added his own analysis of geological factors and published an enlarged and revised edition.
However, I feel that the appeal of this book lies not only in its content, but also in its attitude of not blindly believing in the prevailing theories, but of using various methods to verify the contradictions and doubts felt therein, and of trying to combine the small pieces of knowledge obtained to obtain new and more persuasive viewpoints. This is what impressed me on my first reading of the book, and as a researcher myself, I felt that it is important to do so.
Although a single work, "Study of Hageyama" is extremely interdisciplinary, incorporating elements of human geography, history, folklore, geology, sociology, economics, civil engineering, forestry, and more. Its roots seem to lie in Kunio Yanagida. In the preface of this book, it is stated that "the methodology is the same as that of Yanagida's 'Geboin-iryoku-ko'". It can be further pointed out that this book is also strongly influenced by the viewpoint of "Muko-iri-Ko" that "changes in social structure have changed the marriage customs of the Japanese people.
While such perspectives and interdisciplinary analysis are extremely interesting, it is difficult to accept them in the field of practical science, which asks "What should we do then? Perhaps for this reason, it is rare to hear of any concrete reflection of the contents of this book in subsequent forestry policies, for example.
Since this book, however, the idea that bald hills are not merely a natural phenomenon but the result of human activities has become more widely shared in society, and it is certainly true that this idea is now supported by the forest management and landslide countermeasures that continue to be taken today.
It is also a pioneer in the study of environmental history, and is a book that is always referred to when one tries to get a bird's eye view of the relationship between forests and humans. One example is Conrad Tatman's "How the Japanese Have Created Forests," which will be discussed next.
About the Author
The author, Dr. Tokuji Chiba (1916-2001), was born in Chiba Prefecture. He graduated from Tokyo Prefectural Fifth Middle School (now Koishikawa High School) and Tokyo Higher Normal School (now Tsukuba University), and became a junior high school teacher in Miyazaki Prefecture. He was immediately drafted into the military and served in the northeastern part of China, and after the war was interned in Siberia. He wrote that his research on Hageyama was motivated by his interest in the phenomenon of Yamagata formation he saw at Daxing'anling. After returning to Japan, he studied under Kunio Yanagida. After returning to Japan, he studied under Yanagida Kunio and became a university teacher, teaching folklore at Tsukuba University, Meiji University, and other universities. He received a Doctor of Science degree from Tohoku University for his "Research on Hageyama" and a Doctor of Literature degree from Tokyo University of Education for his "Research on Hunting Traditions. His research themes have changed greatly throughout his life. He is the author of "Hageyama no Kenkyu" (The Study of Hageyama) (Norin Kyokai 1956), "Hunting Lore Study" (Kazama Shobo 1969), "Shin Jina no Kenkyu" (Study of New Place Names) (Kokin Shoin 1983), "Katsugi-Kikusa no Kozo: Nihonjin no Senso Kanten" (The Structure of the Losing Battle: The Japanese View of War) (Heibonsha Sensho 1994), "Why Japanese commit Seppuku" (Tokyo Do Publishing 1994), and "Why the Wolf Nihonjin to Beast no Hanashiwa (Why Wolves Disappeared? A Story of Japanese People and Beasts), published by Shinmono-Oraisha in 1995.
[Addendum
The barren mountains observed in this book, especially in Tamano City, Okayama Prefecture, and Kani City, Gifu Prefecture, are areas where forest devastation is particularly severe, but have been reborn as cedar and cypress forests and are now expected to become tourism resources thanks to subsequent activities by the government, local governments, local residents and others. (Kotaro Nagasawa, Director, Platinum Network)
