Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae has listed forestry as one of four export markets Tokyo is looking to grow with Australia, alongside agricultural, fishery and food products, ahead of yesterday’s summit dinner with Anthony Albanese in Canberra. That is according to a Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs readout, and comes as Japan seeks new markets for its abundance of Japanese cypress (hinoki) and cedar (sugi).
Japan’s 4.4-million-hectare sugi cedar estate and 2.6-million-hectare hinoki cypress estate sit inside a 10-million-hectare planted-forest base that accounts for around one-thirteenth of the world’s commercial planted forest area, with the country’s wood self-sufficiency rate climbing from a record low of 18.8 per cent in 2002 back to 40.7 per cent in 2022. “It is risky to rely on only a few lumber-exporting countries,” Japan Wood-Products Export Association Chairperson Hisao Yamada told The Japan Times in 2024, with the association now diversifying export destinations after decades of low domestic timber prices and a shrinking forestry labour force.
Japanese timber exports already run through China, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan as the largest log-export destinations. The Japan Wood-Products Export Association obtained American Lumber Standard Committee certification for hinoki two-by-fours in April 2024, ahead of a separate certification for sugi two-by-fours secured in April 2025, opening Japanese softwood to the US homebuilding market for the first time after roughly 5 years of preparation.
Sugi carries a price edge over hinoki across the construction-grade range, with Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries data putting processed and dried sugi at ¥19,000 below hinoki for a 10.5cm × 10.5cm × 3m piece, and ¥22,600 below for the same piece undried. Roughly 54 per cent of Japan’s hinoki resource is now over 51 years old and at the ideal harvest age, ahead of broader export-market diversification beyond the existing log trade.
Wood Central reported on last year’s Timber Construct conference in Melbourne, where Shinohara Group managing director Yuichi Shinohara presented the company’s proprietary “click and set” pre-cut two-by-four house-frame system to 200 Australian timber engineers, architects and developers. “On-site installers click 100 square metre houses into place like Ikea furniture,” Shinohara told the conference, adding that the Shinohara Group is now open to working with the local supply chain to bring the technology to the Australian market.
