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

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

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.

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.

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...

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

Related https://us.eia.org/blog/japan-a-major-market-for-high-risk-t... .

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

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.

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 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.

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?