Page 129 - Changing Living Spaces

5

Utilization of Grass and Wood in Common-
5
Use Imperial Land and Incorporation into

Conservation Forest in Yamanashi Prefecture
in the Early Twentieth Century

Taro Takemoto
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan

© 2024 Taro Takemoto
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-399-9.127-146

Introduction

Japan is a mountainous country with few plains, and most of the for-
ests are in mountainous regions. The word sanrin (mountain and forest)
is used to describe this landscape. Moreover, Japan is a country where
regenerative forestry has developed since the early modern period, al-
though such forestry sites were limited (Totman 1989). Therefore, anoth-
er word, rinya, denotes a combined concept of forest and wilderness. This
is because although today’s mountains are almost entirely covered with
trees, in the past there were many vegetation and grassy mountains that
was intermediate between forest and grassy mountains.
Fujita, showing the use of rinya on a map of Japan, gave an impres-
sion of the transformation of grassy mountains into plantations from the
end of the Edo (Tokugawa) era to the present (Fujita 1995). In addition,
Ogura attempted a statistical analysis to determine the change in the
area of grassy mountains from the Meiji period (1867–1912) to the pres-
ent throughout the country (Ogura 2012, 206–7). He assumed that the
wilderness area at the beginning of the twentieth century was about five
million hectares (the total area of rinya was about 24 million hectares).
However, it is difficult to determine the accuracy of statistics collected
during the Meiji period, when grassy mountains were rapidly declining.

Murayama, S., Ž. Lazarević, and A. Panjek, eds. 2024. Changing Living
Spaces: Subsistence and Sustenance in Eurasian Economies from Early Modern
Times to the Present. Koper: University of Primorska Press.

127