Introduction / Chapter 2
Tama Forestry
About 70% of Tokyo's forests are in the Tama area in the west of the metropolis, roughly 53,000 hectares.[1] In Tama's privately owned forests, 60% are planted forests of cedar, cypress and similar species, most of them planted between the mid-1950s and the early 1970s.[1]
Tama's forests today
An era of planting, and an era of not planting
Planting exceeded 1,500 hectares a year in 1960. It then fell sharply, to just 6 hectares in 2003.[1] In terms of age classes, the mountains are filled with trees of the same generation, with almost no young forest.
| Fiscal year | Area newly planted | Situation |
|---|---|---|
| 1960 | Over 1,500 ha | Peak of expansion planting |
| 2003 | 6 ha | Lowest point |
| FY2022 | 48 ha | Harvest-and-replant program continues |
Source: Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Plan for Circular Growth of Forestry and Timber Industry (revised)[1]
Why the trees are not cut
A long slump in timber prices and rising labor costs made forestry unprofitable, so harvesting of cedar and cypress over 50 years old, big enough to use, came to a halt.[3] Steep terrain raises operating costs, and Tokyo's forestry businesses are small with thin margins.[1]
Reaching the city as pollen
Unharvested cedar affects city life too. A 2017 survey estimated the prevalence of cedar pollen allergy in Tokyo at 48.8%, up from 28.2% in the FY2006 survey.[3] The Tokyo Development Foundation for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries runs a program to fell cedar and replant low-pollen varieties. From FY2006 to FY2020 the program shipped a cumulative 257,000 cubic meters of timber.[3]
Natural forests and national forests
In the Mt. Takao national forest in Hachioji, a natural fir forest is designated as a protected plant community. The area lies on the boundary between cool-temperate and warm-temperate zones, and its natural forests include Japanese blue beech (inubuna), konara oak, fir and hemlock.[4]
Across Japan as a whole, vegetation left in its natural state is not common. An exhibit panel I saw at a museum in Ueno Park showed that while forests cover more than 70% of Japan, most of them are satoyama coppice woodland or plantations of sugi, hinoki, larch and the like, and that "natural vegetation"—natural forest and natural grassland combined—makes up 19%. The panel cites the Ministry of the Environment's National Survey on the Natural Environment as its source.
Protection forests: woods you cannot fell freely
Protection forests (hoan-rin) are forests whose public functions, such as storing water, preventing landslides or breaking the wind, are especially important. Under the Forest Act, the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries or a prefectural governor designates them. There are 17 types by purpose, including water-source conservation and erosion control. Once designated, felling trees and changing the shape of the land are regulated[5]. At the end of FY2023 Japan had 12.29 million ha of protection forest: 49.1% of its forests and 32.5% of its land area[6].
The system goes back to the Meiji era. After the great floods of 1896, the Forest Act was enacted in 1897. After the war, the Temporary Measures Act for Protection Forest Improvement of 1954 drove designations forward, renewed every ten years[7].
| Restrictions after designation | Benefits in return |
|---|---|
| Felling requires a permit or notification | Exempt from fixed property tax, real estate acquisition tax and special land holding tax |
| No conversion to other uses such as housing | For inheritance and gift tax, the valuation is reduced by 30–80% depending on how strict the felling limits are |
| Changing the land, for example building work roads, requires a permit | |
| Felled areas must in principle be replanted |
Source: Saitama Prefecture, "About protection forests"[8]. The system rests on the nationwide Forest Act.
In Tokyo, the area of the Tokyo Metropolitan Forestry Office, covering 15 Tama municipalities, held 14,838 ha of protection forest as of 31 March 2019. Of this, 12,478 ha, about 84%, is water-source conservation forest. National forest accounts for 935 ha and non-national forest for 13,903 ha[9].
| Type | National forest | Non-national forest | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Water-source conservation | 485 | 11,993 | 12,478 |
| Erosion control | 296 | 1,316 | 1,612 |
| Landslide prevention | 0 | 51 | 51 |
| Windbreak | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Drought prevention | 0 | 7 | 7 |
| Rockfall prevention | 0 | 35 | 35 |
| Public health (recreation) | 154 | 429 | 583 |
| Scenic | 0 | 71 | 71 |
| Total | 935 | 13,903 | 14,838 |
Unit: ha. As of 31 March 2019. A further 10 ha of non-national fire-prevention forest and 2,293 ha of forest designated for two purposes at once are excluded from the totals. Source: Tokyo Metropolitan Forestry Office, "Business overview, 2019 edition"[9].
Forests in the same area total 52,867 ha (as of 1 April 2019), so protection forest is about 28% of the forest[9]. That is lower than the national 49.1%, but the dates and scope differ, so treat it as a rough comparison.
In FY2018 the Forestry Office handled 9 felling permits (30.4 ha), 37 work permits and 92 thinning notifications (112.8 ha). Inquiries about whether a given plot lies in protection forest numbered 379, covering 4,023 parcels[9]. The metropolitan government manages 10 metro-owned public-health protection forests, 239.4 ha in all, in Hachioji, Akiruno and Hinohara[9].
The water-source forests managed by the Tokyo Waterworks Bureau are also protection forest. They cover 25,666 ha across Okutama and, in Yamanashi, Koshu, Tabayama and Kosuge; Tokyo Prefecture took them over from the imperial forests and began managing them in 1901. They are designated as water-source conservation, erosion control and public-health protection forest[10]. The Yamanashi part is not in the Tama table above.
The Tokyo figures come from the 2019 business overview; the latest areas have not been confirmed. Protection forests on the islands and in the 23 wards have not been researched here.
Forestry workers and money
Forestry workers: 44,000 nationwide
The number of people working in forestry nationwide (forestry workers) has declined for decades, reaching about 44,000 in 2020. The share aged 65 and over (the aging rate) is 25%, above the 15% for all industries. Meanwhile, the share under 35 (the youth rate) has risen since 1990 and now stands at 17%.[11]
Before the national "Green Employment" program began, an average of about 2,000 people a year entered forestry; after it began, the number rose to about 3,200 a year.[11] A system that lets newcomers start working while receiving on-the-job training is bringing more people into the field.
Forestry on the ground in Tokyo
In a Tokyo Metropolitan Government survey of forestry businesses in Tokyo (54 businesses responded), the average age of field workers was 45.7, and about 27% were 34 or younger. In FY2024, 21 people joined and 19 left, a one-year retention rate of 91.8%. Workers with 15 years of experience or less make up 57.3%.[12]
The most common pay band was "¥4 million to under ¥4.5 million," at 26.2%, and about 46% earned under ¥4 million. About three-quarters of the businesses surveyed had raised wages from the previous year.[12]
Danger and working conditions
Forestry is still dangerous work. The number of workers killed or injured per 1,000 workers per year (the injury rate per 1,000 workers per year) was 23.5 in forestry in 2022, against 2.3 for all industries, about 10 times higher. Average annual pay was ¥3.61 million in forestry and ¥4.58 million across all industries.[13]
Ways of working are changing. The share of workers employed 210 days or more a year has risen from 9% in FY1985 to about 70%, and the share paid a monthly salary from 2% to about 30%.[13] Employment is moving toward a stable, year-round form.
Mechanization: high-performance forestry machines
Felling, delimbing, cutting to set lengths, hauling out. Work once done by hand with chainsaws and wire ropes is now taken on by specialized machines. Nationwide there were 16,431 high-performance forestry machines in FY2024, up 1,365 from the previous year and about 2.3 times the 7,089 of ten years earlier (FY2014).[14]
| Machine | What it does | Units (FY2024) |
|---|---|---|
| Forwarder | Loads cut logs onto its bed and hauls them out | 5,186[14] |
| Processor | Delimbs felled trees and cuts them to set lengths | 2,348[14] |
| Harvester | Fells standing trees, then delimbs and cross-cuts them | 2,272[14] |
| Swing yarder | Uses wire ropes to pull logs up or down slopes | 1,151[14] |
Descriptions of what the machines do are general. Unit counts are national totals; figures for Tokyo have not been confirmed.
Does forestry pay?
According to a Forestry Agency estimate, harvesting 1 hectare of 50-year-old sugi (Japanese cedar) plantation yields ¥3.98 million in log sales. But after subtracting the cost of felling and transport, the forest owner's share (the stumpage price) is just ¥1.37 million. The cost of then planting seedlings and starting to raise them is ¥2.75 million, more than that share. Simply harvesting and replanting puts the owner in the red.[15]
The Forestry Agency estimates that "new forestry," combining mechanization with labor-saving planting, could turn a profit of ¥710,000 with measures available today, and ¥1.13 million with new technologies.[15] How much the forest owner's share has fallen compared with the past is summarized under "Timber prices in the past" in the Appendix.
Per-hectare amounts are Forestry Agency estimates for Japan as a whole, not figures for Tokyo's forests alone.
How to secure the workforce
The pillars of securing workers are employment support with training, such as the national "Green Employment" program, and better conditions such as higher wages and year-round employment.[11][13] In Tokyo, most businesses have raised wages, and the number of new entrants and leavers is roughly in balance.[12] Information on finding forestry jobs in Tokyo, and contacts for volunteering in forest care, are collected in the links in the Appendix.
Forests, wood and taxes
Forest environment tax: ¥1,000 a year from Tokyo residents too
Taxes are also used to care for forests. Since fiscal 2024, a "forest environment tax" of ¥1,000 a year has been collected from each person who pays resident tax. Some 60 million people pay it, and revenue is expected to be about ¥60 billion a year.[16]
The tax is distributed to municipalities and prefectures as the "forest environment transfer tax," which began ahead of it in fiscal 2019. It is allocated by three criteria: the area of privately owned planted forest, the number of forestry workers, and population. Criticism that the large population weight sends much of it to urban areas with few forests led to a revision from fiscal 2024 to 55% planted forest area, 20% forestry workers and 25% population.[16]
| Allocation criterion | Until FY2023 | From FY2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Private planted forest area | 50% | 55% |
| Forestry workers | 20% | 20% |
| Population | 30% | 25% |
Source: Dai-ichi Life Research Institute (December 6, 2024)[16]
Even the 23 wards, which have almost no forest, receive this transfer tax. They can spend it either on using wood within their own ward or on helping regions that have forests. In fiscal 2023, for example, Suginami Ward used it for school rebuilding, chairs and shelves for childcare facilities and repairs to wooden playground equipment in parks, as well as a carbon offset project in partnership with another municipality and thinning experiences for children.[17]
Rules for using wood in public buildings
In 2010 the national government enacted the Act on Promotion of Use of Wood in Public Buildings, setting a policy of using wood in national and local government buildings. A revision in October 2021 renamed it the Act on Promotion of Use of Wood in Buildings to Contribute to Realizing a Decarbonized Society, and extended it to all buildings, including private ones.[18] The share of public buildings built of wood, 8.3% when the law was enacted, reached 15.9% in fiscal 2024; for low-rise public buildings of three stories or fewer it was 33.4%.[19] That also means more than half are still not built of wood.
Subsidies for using local wood: Tokyo Metropolis and Minato Ward
Through its "Tama Timber Use Promotion Project," the Tokyo Metropolitan Government subsidizes facilities that wards, cities, towns and villages build or improve using Tama timber—timber construction, wood interiors, wooden playground equipment, and wooden furniture and exterior structures. The subsidy covers half the cost, up to ¥30 million per municipality (as of the fiscal 2023 revision).[20]
There are also systems in which a ward requires the use of wood. Minato Ward's "Minato Model CO2 Fixation Certification System" asks developers building structures of 5,000 m² or more of total floor area in the ward to use 0.001 m³ of domestic timber per square meter of floor area. It also encourages the use of wood from regional municipalities that have signed agreements with the ward ("agreement timber"). It began in October 2011.[21] It is a mechanism by which a central-city ward with no forests channels money to regional forests through its buildings.
I have not confirmed the latest conditions of the Tokyo subsidy, the amounts of the forest environment transfer tax distributed to the 23 wards as a whole or to Tokyo and the Tama municipalities, or the wood-construction rate of public buildings in Tokyo.
Sources
- 東京都産業労働局「林業・木材産業循環成長対策 変更事業構想」 PDF
- 東京都「森づくり推進プラン」表1-1(原典:令和2年版 東京の森林・林業) PDF
- 公益財団法人東京都農林水産振興財団 説明資料 PDF
- 林野庁関東森林管理局「多摩森林計画区の概要」 PDF
- 林野庁「保安林制度」(水源林の保全) Link
- 林野庁「令和6年度 森林・林業白書」第1部第3章第1節 Link
- 林野庁 資料「保安林制度の沿革」 Link
- 埼玉県「保安林について」 Link
- 東京都森林事務所「事業概要 令和元年版」 Link
- 林野庁「水源の森百選 東京都水道水源林」 Link
- 林野庁「林業労働力の動向」 Link
- 東京都森林事務所『林業関係労働力実態分析報告書』(令和7年度、令和8年3月) PDF
- 林野庁「一目でわかる林業労働(データ編)」 PDF
- 林野庁「高性能林業機械の保有状況」 Link
- 林野庁『令和5年度 森林・林業白書』第2章(林業経営の効率化) Link
- 第一生命経済研究所「6,000万人が納税する森林環境税」(2024年12月6日) Link
- 杉並区「森林環境譲与税の使途」(令和5年度決算) PDF
- 林野庁「公共建築物等木材利用促進法」 Link
- 林野庁「公共建築物の木造率について」(令和8年3月30日更新) Link
- 東京都産業労働局「公共施設における多摩産材使用事例集 ver.6」 PDF
- 港区「みなとモデル二酸化炭素固定認証制度実施要綱」 PDF