Days before the world’s attention turns to Osaka for the World Expo, Japan is ramping up logging in pollen-rich cedar forests—a crucial step in addressing its war on hay fever and driving high-value timber production. Already, the government has invested more than US $80m (or 12 billion yen) to construct access roads and subsidies for harvesting crews to remove timber from more than 980,000 hectares of forest.
That is, according to Yosuke Tsuyuki from the Japanese Department of Lifestyle, Science & Environment News, who said the push to cut artificial forests or plantation forests is nonetheless being challenged by persistent labour shortages and new questions over the market demand for Japanese cedar lumber, which is still unclear. “(As a result), the national government’s objectives are burdened by the challenges facing the domestic forest industry,” Tsukyuki said.
It comes after Wood Central last year revealed that Japan was now looking to capitalise on the surge of artificial forests created after the Second World War – rising from 5 million hectares pre-war to more than 10 million in 1949, by using felled timber to fuel its timber economy—a win-win for construction and health.
Japan is the world’s fourth largest consumer of timber products, behind only China, the US, and the EU. As part of its policy of “Promotion for the Use of Wood in Public Buildings,” the then-Kishida government revised its Building Standards Law to encourage cedar use in buildings.
“It’s believed that one in three people in Japan suffers hay fever due to Japanese cedar production,” Tsukyuki said. “That’s why the government has raised the amount of logging per year from 50,000 to 70,000 hectares, aiming to reduce the area of these forests by some 20% over the next decade.”
However, whilst cedar supply is abundant, there are concerns over demand for locally sourced cedar. Last year, Wood Central revealed the Japanese housing market has crashed to a decades-low, with just 818,514 new builds in 2023, almost halving the levels of 1994 (1,540,000). Whilst the percentage of timber-framed houses is on the upswing (59% compared to 43% in 2006), the total volume of lumber used in Japanese houses is declining.
