Page 146 - Changing Living Spaces

Taro Takemoto

to Tokoro (Fujita 1995), 10-12 times the mountain area was needed com-
pared to the field area, while in the case study in this chapter, 4.2 times
the sanrin was needed for rice paddies and 3.2 times for fields. Just as
the prefecture recommended the use of alternative fertilizer, the rapid
changes in the socioeconomy would have led to significant changes in the
use of sanrin resources.
Research on forest management in the colonies has shown that its
characteristics can be found in five categories: redefinition of ownership,
demarcation of forests, changes in the composition of forest vegetation,
strict limitations on customary use, and control of burning (see Guha and
Gadgil 1989, Roche 2010, Sivaramakrishnan 2008). The introduction of
modern forestry in the colonies led to intense conflict between modern
science, technology, and legal systems and traditional resource use due to
unexpected climatic and vegetation conditions, as well as social and eco-
nomic differences. The CILs in Yamanashi Prefecture in the early twen-
tieth century were not a colony, but their actual situation fell under all
these categories. The Survey Report was a proposal for what kind of own-
ership and use would be desirable for the residents and the prefecture in
the chaos caused by rapid modernization.
Finally, another objective of this book is to compare living spaces in re-
sponse to changes in socioeconomic and natural environments. As for the
case studies in this chapter, further research is needed to compare these
areas in Japan with mountain regions in Europe. For example, Kazuhiro
Itami studied France and found major differences in grazing from those
in this chapter (Itami 2020). In contrast to Europe, where afforestation
and grazing clash, in Japan the national government and prefectures at-
tempted to ‘forestize’ the traditional use of sanrin for flood protection
and convert it into timber resources with high monetary value, as op-
posed to the traditional use of sanrin to obtain resources mainly for ma-
nure and fuel, such as karishiki, koshiba, and kaya. However, as part of a
compromise with the residents, the possibility was created to switch to
coppicing in addition to afforestation, which is an easy way to secure re-
sources such as firewood. Our future task is to identify each of these com-
promises in micro-living-spaces in different regions and countries and
discover similarities and differences.

Acknowledgement
This work was supported by JSPS KAKeNHI Grant Numbers
JP22700839, JP18H00642, JP21H00502.

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