Japanese have been producing wood for 700 years without cutting down trees | Hacker News Reader

Japanese have been producing wood for 700 years without cutting down trees

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Coppicing, Hedge laying, Bocage, drystone walling, wattle-and-daub are all domestic comparable ancient crafts of Europe. The point being that probably only drystone walling is valued in a way comparable to the Japanese version of Coppicing, which really has been transformed into an artform. European coppices are cut close to the rootstock and cut down far younger for use as poles, for wood turning, for hedge laying.

Timber framed construction in Europe was nailless (wooden tree nails permitted) but the mortice and tenon joinery of Japan is in another league. Maybe European Gothic cathedral roofs come close, little else would.

Japan modernised in the modern era, it's industrial revolution was comparatively recent and it remained feudal far longer than Europe (Russian serfdom aside)

There are probably more continuous family heritage firms in Japan practising some art (brewing, soy sauce, woodwork, coppicing) than anywhere else. Can you name a European family concern doing the same thing continuously since before 1600? I can't name any Japanese ones but I wouldn't be surprised if there were many. Institutional enterprises like Oxford university press exist since deep time, but in Japan it would be a continuous lineage of printers continuing to use woodblock printing (maybe alongside hot type or photo typesetting)

Farming does remain in the family but European farming practices have modernised since forever.

Thanks for the googling for rabbit holes.

The joinery in traditional Japanese construction is remarkably impressive in its craftsmanship. I've heard it was born from a combination of expensive and poor quality iron for nails (although the same could be said in European construction - hence the phrase, "dead as a door nail") and the desire to be able to relocate Shinto shrines without damage (which required joints that could sustain serious loads without nails or glue). The ingenuity of design, and craftsmanship in their manufacture is something to behold. You can stare at a joint, chiseled by someone hundreds of years ago from fine hardwood and appreciate the care and expertise put into it.

I wonder sometimes what we build that people look back on and will see the same quality of work.

More important: earthquakes.

Large ancient style Nails are a poor choice for a building which over the next 50 years is will experience a 100+ earthquakes. Joined wood is a mechanical connection which would require a house to be disassembled from the top down. The wood would sooner rip than come loose.

Edit: also joinery is not dead. Even modern Japanese houses have most of their connections a joinery. Then reinforced up with nails, cross braces (wood and now metal), and metal pins. Every dozen or so years Japan adds a new method for further earthquake proofing wooden homes.

Stuff built now is expected to survive a Shindo 7 earthquake. Japan has only had 8 Shindo 7s in the past 100 years.

I thought ‘dead as a door nail’ was a reference to dead nailing. Dead nailing being the bending over of the nail to lock it in place. Is this practice somehow related to poor quality nails?

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/dead_as_a_doornail

For an excellent video about the use, history and ethymology of a dead door nails:

https://youtu.be/1JOwfKLdRt8

Iron was expensive in Europe, before mass production a nail had to be made individually by hand which took a long time. Which is why until around 200 years ago nails were used only when nothing else would do.

I imagine it would have been even more expensive and unobtainable in Japan -- they historically had no source of quality iron and most was laboriously refined from iron sands and was of poor quality. This is also what necessitated the development of advanced metallurgical techniques such as repeated folding and blending of different steels to compensate.

> Can you name a European family concern doing the same thing continuously since before 1600?

The oldest (family-held) one in Germany is "The Coatinc Company":

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coatinc_Company

The oldest non-family owned one is "Staffelter Hof", in operation since 862:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staffelter_Hof

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies says by far the most (56%) are in Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinise

Depending on how you draw the lines you end up with very different lists. Europe’s classification of the oldest hotels generally means parts of the same physical building which would exclude most of the Japanese hotels as Japanese buildings get replaced far more frequently.

The Japanese practice of adopting adults to continue a business also blurs the line here. Is selling off the business to someone else enough to maintain continuity? How about operating at the same location? What if the original structure is rebuilt?

It’s worth remembering that adoption is much different to how we’d conceive of it in Europe. If a business wasn’t going to be continued by the offspring then a new business owner could be adopted, as an adult. That’s why there seems to be so many Japanese concerns with incredibly long lineage, but like so much else in Japan to a westerner’s eyes, it’s appearance only.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19505088

This was the first time reading about this, thanks for sharing. It's an alien concept to me so it was a fascinating read.

> but like so much else in Japan to a westerner’s eyes, it’s appearance only.

Eh. I'm not sure I'd call it appearance only. In some parts of "the West" (notably the Roman Republic and early Empire, but it went on a for a long time after that) adult adoption as a succession/continuity-of-business mechanism was commonplace.

Notable Roman examples include the _first two emperors_ (Augustus/Octavian was adopted by Julius Caesar, Tiberius was adopted by Augustus. Tiberius also had both an adopted and natural son; given that the adopted one was adopted before the natural one was born, he was the heir, giving some indication of how seriously this was taken. (Ultimately they both died)

Even in medieval and early modern Europe, legally adopting apprentices etc wasn't uncommon.

My memory was that the emperor adoptions were more pragmatic than anything, either because the emperor didn't have a son or as insurance against a power struggle caused by a single son dying. It's been a while so I could be mistaken.

This is the same mechanism that business succession planning reduces risk. Failure to train and groom new talent for leadership roles is a good way to ensure a company dies with its current staff.

> My memory was that the emperor adoptions were more pragmatic than anything, either because the emperor didn't have a son or as insurance against a power struggle caused by a single son dying.

Yeah, generally, but they're just the most famous examples (because emperor); this was standard behaviour for the time if you had something to pass on and didn't have kids. Adopting adult men was really commonplace in Roman society; Roman infant mortality was _astronomical_. The Japanese adoptions mentioned above were pragmatic, too.

Arguably, it's unfortunate that the custom died out for European aristocracy (though it did continue to some extent for normal people). A _huge_ number of wars were caused by failure to produce an heir.

I meant modern eyes but point taken, that is indeed interesting.

We Americans have had "nepotism" drilled into our heads so much that we apply it to any small family-run business craft and encourage young people to move far away and try to "make it on their own" in cities they have no ties to in industries they don't belong in to avoid the shame of "having everything handed to you." Young Americans in general abhor the idea of doing the same thing their parents did. The problem is this is drilled into middle class kids who think that taking over the family shop/bakery/restaurant is the same as some politician or CEOs son getting easy admissions to harvard and a big 4 internship. The result is a wasted opportunity to build generational wealth, skill transfer, and artisanal mastery as your best decade is wasted trying to get to the same level your parents got to in 20.

The mom and pop shop only works when you have family members putting in all their time to keep it afloat for no pay.

That's why the kids aren't interested in taking it over. It's not a route to generational wealth for anyone who has regular middle-class opportunities, as much as it's a route to being busy all the time, and having nothing to show for it at the end of the day.

Businesses that actually have real prospects frequently get taken over by the kids. The family shop/bakery/restaurant is rarely one that has them. You don't want to be doing all the work in a line of business where the prevailing pay is minimum wage.

Instinctively I thought of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry[1] who made Big Ben and America’s Liberty Bell but I'm not sure if they are still trading.

EDIT: They are! (kinda) The London Bell Foundry are fighting to save the original site and keep it running[4].

There's a few old surviving family businesses in the UK though[2].

If you want really old and still operating I would look at the Livery Companies of the City of London. They're not family businesses obviously but the oldest, Worshipful Company of Mercers[3] got its royal charter in 1394 but existed for long before that. How long ago? No body knows for sure but at least 12th century.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitechapel_Bell_Foundry

2. https://realbusiness.co.uk/the-oldest-family-businesses-in-b...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worshipful_Company_of_Mercers

4. https://www.thelondonbellfoundry.co.uk/

After the Windsor Castle fire of 1992, they rebuilt the wooden roof of St. George's Hall without using a single nail, screw or drop of glue. They had a hard time finding people with the skills and knowledge to do it, as it's pretty much a dead art now.

There's quite a few in Germany. The most famous one is probably Merck (1668). There's a couple of really old banks (Berenberg Bank in Hamburg, 1590) and the industry with the most old companies is probably the glas industry. There's a couple of companies from the 15xx and 16xx. If you're into hiking, you probably heard about Meindl shoes (1683). There's also a lot of breweries, especially small ones in Frankonia. And if you count wineries and restaurants there's some really old ones. Staffelter Hof is usually mentioned as the oldest one (862).

Pretty sure it's the same in most European countries. My guess would be the oldest ones are located in Italy.

Wikipedia has a list (of course), it's pretty interesting to read:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

It’s somewhat sad to read that after 1430 years being family run the oldest company on this list went into liquidation in 2006 and was acquired

The continuity of family companies in Japan also comes from the practice of adult adoption, when the family line doesn't have a suitable successor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_adult_adoption

I read that this legal technique has also been used in Japan as a proxy for Gay Marriage.

Most of the oldest UK ones are pubs, which perhaps says something about British culture.

Or the durability of the value proposition and ability to keep a sufficient number of people interested in keeping the establishment open. Maybe something about the economics of commercial real estate and tax policy in England help survival during downturns.

A German friend phrased it this way for Americans: We have beers older than your country. The depth of history and culture in Europe never ceased to amaze me while I was travelling there, especially in Greece and Italy. I grew up on the prairies in Canada, there was pretty much nothing there 120 years ago.

At the same time, USA has the oldest constitution, and east coast cities for all intents and purposes are 250 years old. If Europe's imperial capitals are essentially 19th century inventions, so are America's (Paris, NYC, Barcelona, Philadelphia, ... all ballooned to their dominant feel during the same decades). The biggest difference is that the brand that the USA is not old or has little heritage, has been along for so long that Americans and Europeans alike have internalized it. But in 2022, America _is_ an old country, and does have a lineage that stretches way back, all the way to antiquity why not.

Just because the US happened to be founded in the Age of Enlightenment that doesn't magically grant us heritage back to antiquity.

And the argument isn't about the size of cities or political organization. But for reference, Philadelphia in 1790 had population 28k. That's on par with Paris around year 0 in the Roman era, or roughly year 1100 as the city recovered in the middle ages.

Would any of these have been the same people? Like is it conceivable the same family lineage in Paris 0-1100, or even 2k years to now or would the war, conquest, etc have changed the demographics considerably?

Lineage in terms of common ancestor and shared DNA? Of course. It’s pretty rare for invasions to result in the wholesale slaughter and replacement of a population.

Well, depends- it’s actually fairly common in earlier ages. In the last thousand years or so a bit less, and last 100 basically not at all.

It's not American exceptionalism to show the similarities to Europe, simply a note of likeness. No need to be hostile to the notion of identifying intersecting attributes.

We’re talking about the length of history, there’s no intersection.

Clearly there is, from the industrial revolution forward.

France tried to completely recreate itself several times during this period. By way of example, we no longer call it the Frankish lands nor the monarchy. Aggregate governance structures have changed tens of times, whereas the US really hasn't changed dramatically in the post Native American and post Revolution periods.

I think give the US is a collection of independent states the massive growth of states in the 1800’s might count as another transformative period for the political institution, which has been relatively stable since the 1900’s with 5 state governments being established (most front loaded the ~first decade).

The French national identity goes back to Charlemagne, not merely de Gaulle.

And the American national identity goes back primarily to the Anglo-Saxons.

We fought multiple wars to sever those ties. Then allowed generations of non-Anglo immigration, not to mention slavery.

There are far more Americans who claim German descent than English. Irish, too. And Blacks.

That’s one of the reasons I used the word “primarily”, which is a word that I would defend. Even if many Americans don’t personally have much English descent, the shared cultural narrative of the country starts there. The central complaint of the American Revolution was that the British were infringing on our traditional “rights of Englishmen”, which evolved over centuries. We’ve retained the English language and the English common law. Many of our cultural and regional variations to this day, even down to our regional dialects, can be traced to those that existed in different parts of England.

Also, please find a reliable citation that says that more Americans have African than English heritage. That strikes me as a very surprising claim.

The US Census, self-identified ancestry.

1 German 46,403,053

2 Black/African-American (non-Hispanic) 38,785,726

3 Mexican (of any race) 34,640,287

4 Irish 33,526,444

5 English 24,787,018

One consequence of American, especially historical, racism (including things like the one-drop rule) is that the experience, and over time the identity, of people (and thus their descendants) who were Black and something else tend to be heavily weighted on the Black side.

Napoleon, in case you studied the subject. The history of Franks and France is certainly not one of direct descendence, nor was there such a thing as a nation or national identity at the time of Charlemagne. Did you know the only surviving Franconian language is Dutch?

There are ancient indigenous civilizations that continue to this day in America, or do we deny their history is part of the history of America? The history of the political Germany is very short if we are talking about established political institutions.

Yes, we worked very deliberately to eradicate those indigenous civilizations, and finally isolate what remained of them from white America.

I’m not sure why people keep bringing up political institutions when the conversation is clearly about cultural institutions.

As the numerous other commentators have identified, people are bringing up politicl institutions because your key point proposing differentiation is defined by political institutions, such as the American revolution, but fails to account for continuity and evolution of cultural institutions that persist beyond those changes. Like continuity of the tossed salad blend of Americans.

But, my original comment to you is that noting continuity and shared evolution of cultural institutions between America and Europe during the industrial revolution is not American Exceptionalism, and isn't really something to have umbrage regarding when others note it.

Well the revolution was ostensibly the founding of America so that seemed the place to start the discussion of American identity. But it’s a fair point that the actual beginnings were was earlier, somewhere between 1607 and 1776.

I always found these statements interesting. Heritage follows a cultural lineage that doesn’t attach necessarily to political institutions. Much of Europe’s political structure post dates the US. The heritage of the US is extraordinarily rich and inherits the heritage of the entire planet as cultures have immigrated and integrated. We have very clear direct heritages to England, Ireland, Italy, Germany, France, China, India, Japan, Russia, Greece, to name a few. Every American city has a “town” for these cultures. Are they not our heritage? How can they possibly not be?

Japan has a very clear monoculture heritage for a very long time. But part of British heritage is Roman occupied England is it not? Germany shares a heritage with Prussia. Much of the world has some Mongolian heritage, don’t they? You can see the influence not just in genetics but in art and culture. How is that not their heritage?

If this is true, then perhaps the issue isn’t that America has no heritage, but that it is so comprehensive that it’s impossible to pin it down to something as distinct as a monoculture?

> Much of Europe’s political structure post dates the US.

I do not think that one can make such a claim objectively. There is a whole lot of prejudice hidden behind the word "much". Political structure simply cannot be quantified. There are elements that were earlier in the US. There are elements that were earlier in Europe. Some elements were earlier in Europe, but given up inbetween and readopted later. Some elements are unique to the US, some to Europe. Some elements have changed so much during their history that you may either claim that they represent a very old system or a very new one. (For the latter: Is present day Vatican the oldest political institution in Europe, because it can trace its origins to Antiquity, or is it one of the youngest, because it was formed with the help of Mussolini?) -- One needs to tell stories of origin, not impose inappropriate metrics.

As a European it just seems weird that sometimes the heritage that is a few generations old is pulled out of thin air in order to give some meaning in the modern day. If your family migrated to the US in the 1800s, you ain’t German, Irish or French no more. Yes, we have the same heritage, but the fork happened so long ago, that you cannot relate to the experience of something that happened later in Europe or elsewhere. Similarly how I cannot go to some German-heritage community in the US and relate to everything they lived through.

I've spoken to people from some parts of the world where they have talked about a "recent" govt or king and then found out they were talking about 300 years ago, which was wild. Their collective sense of history goes back thousands of years. I would really recommend the chance to speak with people from Rome, Cairo, Damascus or Beijing (amongst many others, these are the first that come to mind) who love their local history, and you will get a sense of history that goes back a long way than a lot of people (myself included) can comprehend.

Only Americans think 250 years is old. My home town is closer to 600 years old, and the nearby castle started construction about 750 years ago.

The local history can be traced straight to the stone age.

There are buildings in the United States that are older than the United States, but this does not somehow make the United States less valuable than a building

There was a lot there 120 years ago. However the natives didn't have access to the types of materials that would last in that climate, and of course Europeans destroyed their culture.

I think we disagree on the definition of "a lot". Were there even any permanent settlements on the Canadian prairies? Most of the natives were nomadic.

The Prairies are there because of the First Nations.

Grasslands like Head-Smashed-In were maintained to attract buffalo, and timed to attract them in prime harvest season.

Burning was done to improve productivity of berry patches, etc.

It just doesn't match the European idea of agriculture / settlements.

> Most of the natives were nomadic.

Prior to the horse they were not nomadic, the prairies don't support a nomadic way of life without some animal you can ride, and the prairies didn't have one that can be tamed, so it is clear they were not nomads. The natives didn't have access to the types of building materials that would result in permanent structures, which means there is limited evidence for archeologists to work with, but there is enough about what life was like before the horse to know it wasn't nomadic.

Once the horse came many became nomadic as the horse allowed a nomadic lifestyle that wasn't possible. It wasn't long after the horse those that Europeans wiped the natives out (small pox and the like also wipes out a lot of natives and their culture). There is reason to believe that if the Europeans had brought the horse and then left the nomadic way of life was on the verge of causing a collapse of the Bison population, which would have force major changes (most like a return to farming settlements, but massive starvation followed by some form of culture population control - or something else on these lines that you can think up)

The switch to a nomadic way of life (which was directly caused by the arrival of Europeans) cause the loss of knowledge about the older ways of life. We have to make a lot of guesses, but if you know what to look for some things become clear.

Note that we talk about natives as if they are one culture, but that is not true. There were many different cultures with different ways of life. Some adopted nomadic ways of life more than others. The horse allowed the nomads to out compete those who tried to retain the old ways, so those who didn't adopt the horse either died out (starved, assimilated) or had to move to areas that horse didn't do as well in.

The nomadic way of live also turned to same way it does on the Eurasion steppe, all of a sudden you can have large scale raiding and proto-empires. Those tribes that could buy weapons from Europe and have horses could basically exploit the others. This likely transformed the societies in lots of ways but its hard to know because we do not have good records of those times.

You should probably head to the cradles of civilization if you are looking for ancient civ.

Pithy german comment sounds like your friend has a bit of an inferiority thing going on.

The largest city in the "middle ages" was in the US. Europeans trot that "no history" story out because saying "... and then Europeans engaged in the largest genocide in human history" doesn't feel as good, I guess? There was definitely an interruption and a regime change — Europe's got a lot more of those a lot more recently than the US — but the history is there, if you care to look.

That's just factually incorrect. The largest pre-colonization city in the US was a piddling 20,000. Even Uruk in ancient Mesopatmia, was more than twice that size over 5000 years ago.

Presumably you're referring to Tenochtitlan where Mexico City is today, which is neither in the US, nor was it larger than European cities at the time (although it was up there with Paris and Naples!)

> That's just factually incorrect. The largest pre-colonization city in the US was a piddling 20,000

FYI, Cahokia was thought to have had a population up to 40,000 around the (IIRC) 11th century in Illinois.

For reference, Cahokia was roughly sited at present-day St. Louis.

That's the city I was referring to. The estimates I saw said 20k, so it depends what estimates you look at. It's still very small compared to other major cities of the time.

The largest city in the Middle Ages was either Baghdad or Hangzhou, with neither European cities nor Tenochtitlan reaching half their size.

EDIT: I can’t modify this to narrow the assertion to “… the US had a city (Cahokia) larger than its European contemporaries…”

Also, all of the Americas gets historical short shrift from the old world: my point still stands: there was a concerted effort 500 years ago to exterminate the natives, and the results of that plan continues to this day when people say “X doesn’t have any history”.

So, on one hand you acknowledge the concerted effort to exterminate the natives, and on the other hand you appear more than ready to ascribe the credit for the largest city on that soil to the USA? Isn't that just a little bit callous?

Europeans have no awareness of aboriginal history since they simply didn't have anything like it, so of course their version of history and culture is assumed to be the standard.

surely you aren't saying that current euro cultures are "original". perhaps you're saying that previous cultures were more/more-often absorbed and incorporated?

I think the lack of awareness is more due to the lack of written records.

I'm not so sure that I would say that there is no "awareness", and if there is a lack of awareness- it seems more likely that the lack of awareness is due to the fact that everyone is self centric, Europeans are going to be more aware of European history, in the same way that having grown up in a very specific region of the US, I am more well versed in the local native history than someone that wouldn't be. For instance, in elementary school, we went to visit native burial mounds and were educated on the local native history. All the native names for roads, towns, etc, they were local tribes that we learned about.

Which definition of "aboriginal" are you using here? If you're simply referring to the indigenous people of Australia, it seems a tautology that they didn't exist in Europe. And if you're using aboriginal as an umbrella term for all indigenous people, it seems foolish to me to think that there never were indigenous people in Europe.

Also, you might want to look up the etymology of the word you're using: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aborigines_(mythology)

> The Aborigines in Roman mythology are the oldest inhabitants of central Italy, connected in legendary history with Aeneas, Latinus and Evander.

Apparently, ancient Greek tourists vandalised pyramids in ancient Egypt. There also exist some text on walls with phrases one would expect to find in schools, it’s just that it’s in Ancient Greek.

It’s odd to think that not only time before you existed, but it was packed with people who had more or less the same issues and concerns as you do.

They were ruling Egypt at the time as an upper caste

I think the ruling class of "newer" Egypt was greek.

Pyramid Egypt is "older" Egypt, whose civilization had already died out a long time before that.

Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org /wiki/Ancient_Egypt "Old Kingdom" is pyramid Egypt "New Kingdom" is greek Egypt

There was a weak Middle Kingdom, too

> A German friend phrased it this way for Americans: We have beers older than your country.

To be fair, Anheuser-Busch is older than several iterations of Germany.

We have citizens older than the Federal Republic of Germany.

I don't know about your corner in Canada, but that "there was nothing here 150 years ago" is a dangerous lie told by people in many parts of the USA and Canada that minimized the indigenous people and occupied their land.

Your part of Canada might truly be somewhere with no indigenous presence

There was not much in the way of civilization there 150 years ago. There were indigenous, sure.

How is a self sufficient society with its own language not a civilization?

Maybe you meant to say "We didn't leave much of that civilization"

I mean they didn't have much in the way of writing, architecture, science, or organization. They were thousands of years behind the more advanced civilizations. They had a primitive civilization.

There wasn't much left of their civilization 120 years ago (thanks to Europeans) and they didn't leave much behind that endured.

Native Americans wrote in an alphabet of their design, organized societies (sometimes at a large scale e.g. Cahokia), they clearly built structures of their own architected design, and they had science depending on your strictness in evaluating its definition.

I am disheartened by your comment.

All of that is pretty cool, but it's nothing compared to what the Greeks accomplished over 2000 years earlier. Or the Romans, or the Chinese, or the Egyptians, or the Incas, etc. The Native Americans were downright primitive by comparison with other civilizations. Especially on the prairies of Canada where they were basically hunter-gatherers living in small bands. I am likewise disheartened by your wilful ignorance of the truth.

"the Egyptians did it bigger" is a far cry from your original claim that there was "not much in the way of civilization" there at all.

I see it the same way. Semi nomadic bands of a couple hundred people without permanent structures is "not much in the way of civilization".

This is the fundamental difference in our views. I believe that the permanence of cultural output is arbitrary to the value of the culture, especially to those who participate in that culture.

Culture != Civilization. Culture is a term used to denote the manifestation of the manner in which we think, behave and act. Civilization refers to the process through which a region or society, outstretches an advanced stage of human development and organization.

I think we've been having disjoint discussions.

In that sense there's always a bigger fish. My Chinese last name is older than the idea of Germany.

> There are probably more continuous family heritage firms in Japan practising some art (brewing, soy sauce, woodwork, coppicing) than anywhere else. Can you name a European family concern doing the same thing continuously since before 1600? I can't name any Japanese ones but I wouldn't be surprised if there were many. Institutional enterprises like Oxford university press exist since deep time, but in Japan it would be a continuous lineage of printers continuing to use woodblock printing (maybe alongside hot type or photo typesetting)

That's a bit exagerated. There are a lot of fields in Europe which keep traditions since the Middle Ages. Sure, the difference is the amount of people doing it, but it is still there.

Centuries old breweries in Germany, Czech Republic and Poland. Traditional tweed weaving in Scotland. Stone cutting and stained glass apprenticeship through "brotherhoods" in France. That is just on the top of my head. The only difference with Japan is that those markets have already shrunk to modern needs and those markets already went through centuries of heavy modernization. So one really traditional european company serves the market like tens would in Japan.

But the traditional know how is still there.

Espaliering fruit trees is popular even today. Obviously in this case people are just picking fruit off the water sprouts that shoot up each year rather than using the wood for other purposes, but the general idea is the same. The shoots just get trimmed back every year rather than every other year.

E.g. if you look at this pic of a fig tree, you can see that it looks almost identical to the Japanese technique:

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/10/10/realestate/06gard...

Everyone here is mentioning coppicing, so I suspect there will be some interest in the Low Tech Magazine articles on the subject:

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/coppicing/

And since we're talking about doing cool things with trees, I just wanted to mention that LTM has more interesting articles slightly "adjacent" to this topic, like this one about a half-forgotten technique for growing citrus trees in climates with freezing temperatures:

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-culti...

I really need to check that site out more often. Every time I see a link it's great - that second link you posted about the Soviet Union's techniques for growing citrus fruits well north of where they're normally grown is cool.

Wow thanks a lot. I wasn't aware of this website. That's a place to spend hundreds of hours :)

They even have printed books covering all their articles...those will make excellent x-mas gifts for some friends of mine.

FWIW you can replace the "www" in your links with "solar" to access LTM's solar-powered version of their website. It's off-grid and solar panel powered, so not available 365 days of the year, but I've yet to find it offline when I check. I think it's a neat project. :)

It's a very cool project, and I really like the aesthetic of beige-ish background and reduced-bit, dithered images, almost feels like an old school magazine

I wish there was a way to apply this technique to some of the rarer woods that have fantastic uses in production, like teak, rosewood, and grenadilla.

If you're into hardwoods like musical instruments or fine furniture there's an appreciation you grow for the character of these woods. And a moral quandary with the sourcing of it. It seems impossible to find a sustainable method to source the material. A lot of what we make today will seem impossible in the coming decades.

Grenadilla trees in particular are suffering due to over harvesting and poor oversight in the markets where it is sourced. It is prized for woodwind instruments - and the day is coming where it's only going to be economical to use recycled polymer composites (which have many benefits besides commercial) over true solid wood instruments. If we could sustainably turn these trees into fruit trees harvested over centuries it would be a great service to nature and the industry.

This technique doesn't really offer a solution: as a rule, the harder and better quality the wood, the slower it grows, so the possibility to supply more when demand is high is limited, which makes the wood more expensive, so the temptation of "poaching" it is greater.

The cedar shoots in this article are claimed to be stronger and to grow quicker though

They probably mean 'stronger' in the sense of a beam, and stronger in the sense of stronger than the cedar that is not grown like that. This is probably due to the straight grain and lack of knots.

That is not the property people need everywhere timber is used. Perhaps the finger board of a violin needs to be hard. The wooden bed of a scaffolding (and they are still wood in the uk) lorry needs to be tough and durable. An electric guitar body needs a certain density.

Coppice poles are not good for any of these things.

Fair point (although I'm fairly confident that a straight grain and a lack of knots is very desirable for wooden instruments, so if this is true for coppicing in general (so regardless using mutant cedars) that seems like an avenue worth exploring)

The coppice trees actually tend to have a limited size too

To get planks good enough to make a guitar out of the tree needs to at least twice the diameter of the plank, a plank sawn right through the middle of a tree will warp horribly and probably split down the centre. To get wide planks you need an old tree.

See 'quarter sawing' on your favourite online resource.

Electric instruments in general derive their sound mostly through the electronics. There are quite a few high end electric guitar companies (like PRS) that would like you to believe otherwise. If you are in the market for an electric instrument please don't have it made from rare, questionably sourced hardwoods!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02tImce3AE

Trees don't move; it's perfectly possible to guard them from poachers.

Perhaps you are in the forestry business, in which case, fine, but otherwise I would advise against speaking with the unearned confidence of a physicist looking at a different field and declaring it trivial[0]. Most of the time things aren't as simple/easy as they appear on the surface.

[0] https://xkcd.com/793/

Funny, but I do feel like there's not much you couldn't throw a team of programming physicists at, if not just for their widened perspective and the fact that they have such a good springboard to study anything else - wouldn't work if they had the attitude of the guy in the xkcd comic of course.

The latter point is why you can often do well with physics dropouts (e.g. ABD ph.d students,disillusioned post-docs); good problem solving skills but less hubris.

Of course physicists are not the only example of this effect.

With what army? The customs agents get bribed to stamp the lumber with official seals and it is sold to exporters with official documents so it can be shipped with plausible deniability. There's no incentive nor will to protect those trees.

And when there is a will it tends to turn into something like the Earth Liberation Front. I can highly recommend the documentary "If A Tree Falls" on that subject - it also discusses the complex role of the national forestry agencies in regards to managing forests.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Liberation_Front

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_Tree_Falls

Yes - but if you need trustworthy guards, 24 x 7 x 52 x $YearsUntilHarvest, then the economics of growing trees get vastly worse.

" it's perfectly possible to guard them from poachers"

This is completely overlooking the sheer size of the earth and the sheer numbers of people/tech devices it would take to guard them from poachers.

We can guard some trees (and some animals) from poaching, but it really is beyond us to guard them all, even if they don't move.

> This is completely overlooking the sheer size of the earth

We're talking about farmed trees. They're already under active management.

if you want something you are going to have to deal with those that get in the way. Ethics aside, you can only fail by not wanting it badly enough.

I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible, but nobody has successfully tried. It would require a combination of expert knowledge, the kind of long-term thinking/investment that the market currently is set up against, plus a lot of money over a long period of time to be able to afford experimenting like that in the first place.

It will probably take state-sponsored forestry research to figure this out.

Or, you know, a retiree with a penchant for forestry and gardening. All it takes is interest, just look at the community of people obsessed with grafting or other botanical pursuits.

Well, given the time frames we're talking about they might lack the remaining lifespan needed to see a project like this through to the end. Definitely an option to get such a project rolling though.

And your second point is valid too - we shouldn't underestimate the internet's ability to give niche subcommunities a chance to flourish even when people are physically far apart.

It works with European and North American hardwoods so it could probably be applied to other species as well.

The ancient japanese governments restricted the peasants from destroying the allmende. No hunting with weapons, only traps. No chopping down trees. Its the only way a society on a island with limitations can thrive.

This is a hack to circumvent the no lumbering rule. As far as im aware, similar rules never were applied in europe, just all things chopped down, and then some state forrests and macchia.

Certainly no hunting with weapons (no anything with weapons really) did apply in feudal Europe; the nobles were allowed to carry and use a weapon while the peasants were not. As for the trees, that was managed by the feudal owner of the land. Usually some forests were cut down early (between ca. 500-1300 AD) where arable land was under them, the rest was managed and used for construction and heating/cooking. Later many forests were completely cleared at the beginning of the industrial revolution to manufacture charcoal, used in many industrial processes. Some of them are now regrown.

Thats medieval northern europe, aka france, germany, england. The rest, the forrest was basically used up permanently during roman times.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macchie

Also Ireland, Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, parts of Hungary, Romania, Ukraine at least that I know of. But you are right, I thought of the Roman times immediately after finishing my comment.

Oak forrests were very controlled in many European countries, for national security reasons. (Needed to make war ships.)

> allmende

Can't find this word in any English dictionary I checked, what does it mean?

It’s German meaning “commons" - communal lands.

Alemania(SP)/Allemagne(FR) for Germany -- must be related??

Similar etymology, I would suppose “All mans” https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamans

It sounds a lot like "allmänning", which means common land (obviously)

Clickbait title. Japanese do cut trees. This technique is just used in very minor situations.

Given I was asked for my location, popup permission and signup before I could even read the article, the title is the least of it's problems.

Hrm, didn't happen for me.

. o O ( A/B test, maybe? )

> The other reason the technique was developed was fashion. In the 14th century, a linear, stylized form of architecture known as sukiya-zukuri was extremely popular

I'm also fascinated by how Japan apparently had it's own Bauhaus period, some 600 years before the west did.

It resurfaced again in 1998 [1]

[1] https://www.discogs.com/release/1251099-Various-Satori-A-Tri...

Oh, that's cool!

I also found this bit [1]. So there really seems to be a connection between Sukiya-zukuri and Bauhaus:

> In 1954 Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus visited Katsura Detached Palace and was so struck by it that in 1960 he co-authored Katsura: Tradition and Creation Japanese Architecture with Kenzo Tange.

(Though the book quote in the article seems to be about Zen gardens, which reads to me as maximally un-Bauhaus-like, so not sure if the style really was a direct inspiration for Bauhaus.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukiya-zukuri#Influence

...ok, knowing historical dates is advantageous :)

The art school existed from 1919-1933. So if he went to Japan in 1954, obviously it couldn't have been an influence.

Fun coincidence nevertheless.

When I first drove past freshly coppiced woodland near me I was shocked. What had they done? They'd butchered the forest. All the trees reduced to less than a foot off the ground. They all grow back though and it doesn't take too long for the woods to return to what they looked like before.

Beavers in the wet meadow by my driveway coppice willows to produce large amounts of material on a sustainable basis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing

I've not only seen the results but I've actually pulled the wood out of their dams by hand when I disassemble them to prevent them from flooding my driveway. It's not that hard to do so long as you keep the water level low. Once the water level gets high they get a lot more productive because they can easily float large amounts of wood.

How much timber can be made this way (including similar methods like coppicing)?

Is it enough to contribute a noticeable amount to the modern timber industry? Or is it more of a "huh that's cool" conversation topic?

its more useful for specific kinds of timber. If you want giant planks for building houses with, not that useful. We coppiced wood so it would grow a convenient size for chopping into firewood. Another large benefit is they tend to grow faily tall and straight, so are useful for things like stakes for fence posts.

My somewhat limited understanding is that coppicing or especially pollarding requires significantly more labor input. Modern timber harvesting is very highly industrialized. I have never seen any kind of machinery or industrial processes for managing a forest for coppice. I suspect that another factor may be density of a managed woodlot, but again I am not in the industry, just an owner of a small bit of “forest”, so my perception may be off.

> Is it enough to contribute a noticeable amount to the modern timber industry?

This is the same question with renewable energies.

The answer is that maybe, just maybe, the "modern X industry" is unsustainable and we should strive to be more frugal/efficient

This could be wrongly understood as "Japan wood industry doesn't cut down trees", which is false.

Japanese forests are currently suffering an intense demand and are overexploited.

A large part of the cuts are undeclared or under-declared, and clear cuts are not rare.

Undeclared overexploitation of mountain top forests has been one of the determined causes of some catastrophic landslides a couple of years ago.

@dang would it be possible to update the title in order to convey the meaning that it is one fabulous technique used in Japan, without letting believe that it is the technique used in Japan?

> A similar technique is also used in other parts of the world, such as the UK, but under the name Coppice and Pollarding. While the technique is similar, it's not exactly the same, as daisugi only works with seedlings from a specific mutant cedar in a specific location in Kyoto.

Dang, that's a shame.

It’s the champagne of pollarding

Unless your pollarded lumber came from a mutant cedar in a specific location in Kyoto, it's just sparkling timber.

I want this t-shirt.

That phrase got me confused: there are several other "species" of cultivated plants that are actually clones of a single mutant plant, most famously the Cavendish banana. But "seedlings" suggests that this mutant cedar can pass on the mutation when reproduced from seeds, not only through cloning? Actually, I suspect that the main reason why this is not doable at scale is the amount of manual labor involved - cutting off the offshoots without damaging the tree below sounds like quite a challenge...

Similar to coppicing! Or maybe a regional specialization of coppicing?

Trees are incredibly resilient organisms, and producing products like this from them is such a great lost art.

> This is an ancient method, developed in the 14th century

14th century ancient? bah humbug! There's evidence of coppicing in the UK from about 6500 years ago.

> The practice of coppicing can be traced back to Neolithic times (4500 BC). Neolithic wattle trackways in the Somerset Levels are evidence of sophisticated coppicing systems which produced rods of exactly the same size. Archaeological evidence shows that coppice products were used for numerous rural needs throughout the Bronze, Roman and Saxon periods

https://www.conservationhandbooks.com/woodlands/a-brief-hist...

Without cutting DOWN trees. I was trying to guess how they could grow square trees.

I'm sure people "molded" tree into squarer outer shape in the past.

See also this video and information from a german TV show: https://www.galileo.tv/natur/daisuigi-wie-in-japan-holz-gewo...

It seems like this ancient practice can not fulfil Japan's timber demand.

Yes. The linked post says Japan is the 4th largest importer of wood. My geography professor in 1981 told us about it being cheaper to send raw wood logged in the Pacific Northwest to Japan for finishing than it was to ship it across the country. And, in Collapse I think, Jared Diamond talks about Japan "exporting" its deforestation to less-developed countries. Other countries do this too (and for other natural resources too), of course, but any of the "sustainability" of these old practices is greatly outweighed by the damage done by mass logging in the less-developed countries.

> daisugi only works with seedlings from a specific mutant cedar in a specific location in Kyoto

Need more mutations!!

I couldn't help but think about how this is similar to the type of pruning/bending you apply in conjunction with trellis netting when growing cannabis if you want to maximize your top colas in a confined space.

> Here and there in the forests around Kyoto you will find abandoned giant daisugi (they only produce lumber for 200-300 years before being worn out), still alive, some with trunk diameters of over 15 meters.

15 meters?? Seriously??

Youtube video is bad, there's no video to see how things are really done.

Always love reading about sustainability practices.

Sidenote/tangent: why put a chat modal on a blog? I don't get it. It takes up valuable mobile real estate and I'm sure the desktop UX is not improved.

I always thought that trees spend energy to grow higher, because they are fighting for the sun. Looking at the picture there seem to be enough sun for each sprout,why does it keep growing?

Does the Japanese government pay for or in some way support articles like this? Do people in Japan get articles about how amazing coppicing is in the UK?

Articles like this about Japan make me feel a bit weird but I kind of wish we were better at fetishising our own produce and practices like we do with the Japanese.

Oh, indeed - and sometimes worse:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

> is a sense of extreme disappointment exhibited by some individuals when visiting Paris, who feel that the city was not what they had expected

> The syndrome is characterized by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution ... derealization, depersonalization, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, and others, such as vomiting

uhhh, what?? just from being disappointed in a place you're visiting? I had to double check the link to make sure it wasn't some satirical site.

I think it’s just extreme culture shock. Some Japanese people, and likely the kind to follow a romanticised dream of visiting Paris, are very sheltered. If your first experience of a country other than Japan (a very ordered place with powerful social norms) is the actual Paris (where the environment is comparably a lot more chaotic and people are not exactly friendly) then I can see how you might lose your mind a bit with shock.

What you need to understand is how Paris is horrible in the exact ways Japanese cities are nice.

Paris is dirt, aggressive, expensive, with horrible customer service. All things Japanese city has and would never think to include in a tourism pitch.

Japanese Tourists expect Paris to be a Regular (Japanese) City + Romanticism. What they get has no romance, and a city even regular French people consider rude.

well its relative. for instance japanese parks are horrible. paris parks are a thing of beauty. the mayor is indeed contributing to make it a dirty agressive and expensive city by not fighting crime, mass tourism (she loves it. somehow she hates french people having cars but she is fine with rich tourists riding cabs in paris) and all the theft that is related to mass tourism... customer service is not at the level of japan but at least its not at the level of usa where everything is a transaction and every word is fake.

She? Come on, Paris has always been like that.

between her and her mentor its been a single power in place since 2001 so I don't know what you define by "always" but it definitly got worse from 2001 and so on with a sharp acceleration when she got into power. paris debt too.

Since when are Japanese parks horrible? There are a several good parks in/around Tokyo.

> "But some of them end up in tears, swearing they’ll never come back."

How I feel when my favorite bakery in Paris is out of pain au chocolat.

I don't see it in the wiki article, but I wonder if this happens with other cities/locales? And surely this can't be something that only people from east asia feel?

fyi. Paris syndrome is heavily disputed among scientist, because the causality was never proven and the original author has 'vanished' from the scene.

i.e. do mental people visit Paris or does Paris cause mental illness?

GK Chesterton made similar points to you, but about religious orientalism, in "The Everlasting Man".

The answers are most likely "yes" and "yes".

Except thay Japanese most likely read about London with its exchanges and culture and not about coppicing. Maybe some Scotland pastoral images, since it also sells hard liquor.

I think this is actually search engine optimization by a jewelry company. Of course if the end result of gaming the system is interesting content like this, I can’t complain.

Not saying this is not true, but… the rewards being on “interesting” rather than a faithful depiction of reality has given us things like the the Murdochs, Sinclair, and Fox News.

>Do people in Japan get articles about how amazing coppicing is in the UK?

Yes. If not coppicing, than a million other things. It's also not any different than seeing romanticized articles about distilleries in Scotland or Iberico ham or a million other things that we see targeting Americans. The US being so relatively young doesn't get romanticized passed-down-through-history articles written in Europe, but they get plenty about modern American exports like Hollywood, etc.

People like learning about things that are different and it's easy to draw eyes if you add a bit of mystique around a subject that people won't be particularly familiar with.

Solingen Kitchen Knifes are highly valued. Go into any department store, and you will find the finest selection of german knives. Of course - it is the other way around in Germany.

Huh? Solingen knives are quite popular here in Germany as well :P

> Do people in Japan get articles about how amazing coppicing is in the UK?

They might get confused since Copic is a popular brand of art marker there.

I had to check but apparently the name is because they're designed to work with copier machines, not from this. (https://copic.jp/en/about/history/)

I see a lot of programme's about Japanese trades and crafts on NHK and that's owned by the Japanese government, so I would guess the answer is yes.

I would also imagine our government, the UK, promote our culture via the BBC too. I believe it's called "soft power".

I'm OK with it. I actually seek out these sorts of programmes on both NHK and the BBC 'cause I like seeing master craftsmen at work. Anytime I see some guy in London making clocks by hand with a Cowells lathe or a bloke and his son working a hammer in an Osaka forge I'm happy.

I'm not sure which other "articles like this" you are referring to, but I don't think you need to be too worried.

Was this article was paid for by the Japanese government? I doubt it. The website appears to be that of a business that would like to sell you things, which seems a likely enough motive for them to post articles on just about anything.

You might be interested in Cool Japan[0], which is part of Japan's "overall brand strategy". This sort of national marketing is not unique to Japan, but their various campaigns are a noteworthy successful example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Japan

> Do people in Japan get articles about how amazing coppicing is in the UK?

Not quite but there is a fair bit of interest in UK culture to a point where there are “England fairs” in department stores and malls time to time.

That being said I’m also kinda sick of people using Japanese words instead of direct translation for some reason. Kaizen and Ikigai comes to mind.

> Kaizen and Ikigai comes to mind.

I can understand that though - without the translation, the terms become more specific in English usage. Take Kaizen, or Continuous Improvement. Specifically using the Japanese term shows what sort of continuous improvement you're doing. I notice, however, that it's also apparently a trademark....

> Specifically using the Japanese term shows what sort of continuous improvement you're doing.

Yeah but I find it weird that the meaning of kaizen is now different in that specific lean or whatever context when kaizen just means improvement in Japanese.

Come to think of it, There are many English words that Japanese people use that now mean something different, so I guess it’s just how things are :p

I think I’m just annoyed at these types of articles that puts Japanese words everywhere they can.

I’d love to see some more information about these fairs if you have a link.

My wife likes watching a lot of British YouTubers in Japan and it’s made me want to see more about how the Japanese view British culture.

I’ve just googled the department store near me and looks like they had a “Great British fair” last year.

https://www.ukft.org/hankyu-great-british-fair-2021/

Another fair ran by department store this year:

https://www.mistore.jp/shopping/event/nihombashi_e/british_5...

I’ve never been to one so maybe looking up Japanese YouTubers might be your best shot for this topic.

For a start, take better pictures. Compare the linked article with the Wikipedia article for coppicing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing

In the Japanese photo, it looks like there are trees growing out of trees. In the UK, a dying bush is growing out of a stump.

Many popular Japanese things are actually Norwegian. Like salmon sushi and Kirin beer. I wonder how well known that's in Japan.

Norway was looking for new salmon markets in the 90s and came up with the idea of salmon sushi

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/501693/how-norwegian-sal...

Kirin beer was started by a Norwegian brewer in 1869.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Copeland_(brewer)

We get articles about all facets of western culture and practices in the Japanese press. As someone who was born in the UK I've often learned things about European culture which I didn't know before.

Japan like the UK and US is a cultural superpower. When you're able to wield that much soft power no money ever needs to change hands.

>This is an ancient method, developed in the 14th century

Isn't it interesting, how most of the history of East Asia just has label "ancient" slapped onto it in pop-culture?

In western pop culture you mean. I'm sure Japanese people have similar ways of referring to Western history.

Japan went through a significant cultural upheaval during the Meiji restoration. So much of Japanese culture comes from the Meiji era up into the start of the Taisho era and as a result a lot of people treat everything prior to the Meiji restoration as "ancient times".

Hell unlike most western culture, Japan didn't really get their current system for naming individuals and families until the 1870s.

But as to why all these practices in Japan that date past the Meiji era are considered "ancient", one of the major parts of the restoration was the systematic centralisation of Japanese society and standardisation of practices. This resulted in a lot of practices being more or less outlawed with the surviving practices that weren't officially sanctioned by the central government surviving solely due to rebellious/non-compliant individuals secretly preserving their practices throughout the Meiji era.

Into the late Taisho and early Showa era, the threats of violence from the central government were removed and the stigma around these "outlawed" practices faded, allowing families to publicly practice their "non-standardised" crafts.

This is more or less the reason behind the seemingly endless quantity of "ancient crafts" and "secrets passed down through generations". There was a systematic attempt at eliminating non-conformant practices for a good ~40-60 years. That's at least a few generations who grew up fearing retribution for practicing their family traditions.

There's also a whole orientalisation/fetishisation of Japanese things and concepts. The same applies to the broader east asian and greater asian cultures.

> Hell unlike most western culture, Japan didn't really get their current system for naming individuals and families until the 1870s.

Interestingly enough I think the Scandinavian countries moved from a patronymic system around the same time. My hunch is that this is due to globalization of the era and increased international/interimperial interactions.

>>This is an ancient method, developed in the 14th century

> Isn't it interesting, how most of the history of East Asia just has label "ancient" slapped onto it in pop-culture?

At least in China, they freely refer to that time period as being "ancient" (古). "Ancient" is probably any time up to the early 20th century.[1]

If you want to emphasize that something is really ancient, you can use 上古.

[1] I asked Baidu 什么时候算古代 ("what time counts as 'ancient'?"), and it turns out I was wrong. The answer is "before 1840".

As a European who often reads material targeted at Americans, I would just assume that is what the author is doing here.

The standards for "ancient" are simply relative to your own cultural history. A 200 year old building in the US is ancient - a 800 year old building in Germany is also ancient.

The use of word "ancient" you present here is correct only in very colloquial meaning; it's akin to calling your grandpa a dinosaur. Neither 200 years ago in USA nor 800 year ago in Germany are ancient times in proper meaning of this word.

Dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33715565

That one was later so we merged it hither.

I can produce wood too without cutting down trees

Reply on news.ycombinator.com