anybody know any thing about tree care in japan?

[Kikori]

Good pix. Yeah those are good examples of Japanese pruning practices. They try to minimize the mass of the tree while still giving their citizes the impression that their cities have some resemblence of nature in them. I think one of the mantras the govertnment lives by is "if its natural, cover it in concrete."

One more interesting tidbit of Japanese tree related trivia is that because of a lack of area to grow timber, the government implemented regulations that a large majority of the timber grown had to be of the most effiencet species. "Sugi" ceders are the main crop for Japanes timber farmers. Most of the tiber is grown on the side of mountains. The only problem with this practice is that this particular species of ceder releases a pollen in the spring that a large percentage of the population is allergic to. So the government is inderectly propogating the sufferage of its citizens during allergy season.

nande daro?
Kikori

 

[Stu in Tokyo]

Really late getting in here guys....

I live in Tokyo, and they do really awful things here to trees that are beside the roads, REALLY awful.

Trees that are in parks and on temple grounds are much better taken care of. Near me, on the grounds of a Hospital is a VERY beautiful Big tree, it is stunning, and a tad rare.

The reasons they use the claw to tear down a tree are many. One is that this method is fairly easy, and anyone can do it, the next reason is they have real trouble finding anyone who knows how to use a chainsaw, also on the list of reasons is that the tree being removed is most likely in very poor shape, and if you felled in with a chainsaw, who knows where it might land, which brings up the last reason, there is not space to fell a tree.

Something else to consider is that even on the temple grounds or around the emperor's palace in the center of the city, there are not a lot of old trees. At the end of WWII Tokyo was firebombed and just about every thing went up like a torch, so finding old trees in Tokyo is hard to do. If you go out in the countryside, you see a lot of old trees on private property as well as in parks and at temples.

Remember, Tokyo is NOT Japan.

Oh yeah, about the cedar trees, the story there is that the government did mandate the planting of the trees, as it was a huge cash crop, but over the years the logging industry has fallen off sharply, because it is way cheaper to just import the logs from Canada or the US.

We saw a show on NHK tonight about this, they said that in 1952 there were 680,000 people directly involved in the logging industry in Japan, now there are less than 60,000

They also said that in 1952 there were 17,000,000 hectares or forest in Japan, now there are 40,000,000 (sorry, the Japanese numbering is a little weird, I know the two numbers were 17 and 40 now, but I'm not sure it it was 170,000 or 1,700,000 or 17,000,000).

Because all of these stupid cedar trees were planted and they were expected to be a cash crop in 30 to 40 years we have this pollen problem, now a lot of the trees are in trouble, they have not be cared for, the plantings are much too dense, etc. etc.

They just about need a huge wild fire to balance things out.

Well, that is my two yen's worth.

Cheers!

 

[trevmcrev]

Not Japan but........
In Singapore in Orchard rd which is the premium area in the city, like a rodeo drv beverly hills type of thing, i saw some interesting tree work going on.
Bucket truck older than me, no warning signage about, 2 guys wearing shorts and thongs(sandals?), no ppe, 1 ancient looking cahinsaw on the ground with the chain hanging down just about touching the ground, and the guy in the bucket doing all his pruning with a machete!
Was quite efficient though, one swipe and off comes a 5 foot long, 2" dia branch. Got video footage of it somewhere.

Trev