LESTE VERMELHO
revista de estudos críticos asiáticos
issn 2446-7278
volume 3 - número 1 – janeiro de 2017
.
ARTIGO INÉDITO
TOWARDS A NEW OLD FOREST: THE
REFORESTATION EFFORTS OF LAI PEI-YUAN
AND MIYAWAKI AKIRA
Jon Pitt | University of California Berkeley
Introduction
The Japanese-British Exhibition, a six-month international exposition viewed by
the Japanese government as a means to garner support for recent colonial acquisitions,
was held in London in 1910. One of the key goals of exhibition, according to Ayako HottaLister, was to “demonstrate the great progress of, and improvement to, (Japan’s colonies)
since coming under the rule or influence of Japan in contrast to their former primitive
state” (84). The Japanese Bureau of Forestry, at the time a branch of the Department of
Agriculture and Commerce, published a short text for this exhibition, cataloging the
various species of trees present in the Japanese empire and highlighting their uses.
Simply titled Forestry of Japan, this text makes clear the link between Japan’s colonial
project and the material and aesthetic role of Japan’s forests:
Along the western shore of the Pacific, there lies a group of numerous islands stretched
in a serpent like form covered with rich verdant growths over two thirds of the area of
the land. These verdant growths are none other than the forests of the Empire of Japan.
The wholesome effects produced upon the land and the people by these forests are both
striking and remarkable. The Japanese by nature love their forests and derive
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enjoyment from the prosperous and luxuriant growths of the same. The burning
patriotism and the refined aesthetic ideas of the Japanese are in a large measure the
outcome of the influence exerted upon the minds of the people by these forests.
(Forestry, 1)
Within this rather poetic introduction, the forests of Japan stand as an intersection of
aesthetics and patriotism, demonstrating an ominous nationalism that suggests forests
are in “large measure” the driving force behind Japan’s colonial project, which, by 1910,
included the Ryūkū Islands (or Okinawa), Hokkaidō, Taiwan (or Formosa), South
Sakhalin (or Karafuto), and would soon include Korea, four months into the Exhibition
in London.
Forestry of Japan moves from forests as the aesthetic and patriotic impetus for
annexation to the inevitable exploitation of these forests as the economic goal of
annexation. In the text’s second chapter, which outlines the establishment of the Imperial
Forest (Goryōrin), these annexed lands are portrayed as valuable commodities full of
exploitable forestlands: “In making a mention of the topographical condition of Japan, it
will be noted that only a few days have elapsed since Karafuto, Formosa, and Hokkaido
have begun to be exploited so that there is a vast tract of land that may be regarded as
the forest districts being rich in forests” (13). Thus while the “verdant growths” of
Japanese forestland give rise to a patriotism tied to a proclaimed native land, these “vast
tracts” of forestland in newly acquired colonies are the object of colonial expansion.
Forests, then, are both a cause and effect of the Japanese colonial project, an aesthetic
justification and an exploitable commodity.
Through the lens of colonial legacy, the history of modern forestry in Japan and
Taiwan are inseparable. Unlike Hokkaido and South Sakhalin, however, the management
of forestry in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule did not fall solely under the Japanese
Bureau of Forestry, but was rather overseen by the local colonial government1. While
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Taiwanese deforestation during the Japanese colonial period was not as severe as the
hyperdeforestation following the arrival of the Kuomintang (KMT) to Taiwan in 1949,
vital forestry infrastructure, such as the Alishan Forest Railway, is a direct legacy of the
Japanese colonial period. The perceived moment of potential in exploitation written into
Forestry of Japan can be seen as a starting point from which two connected-yet-distinct
paths have emerged in the postcolonial aftermath of the intertwined histories of Taiwan
and Japan. These intertwined histories have played out in and indeed played into the
unfolding of the Anthropocene, the prosed geological epoch in which human activity has
affected the planet on a geological scale. In response to notions of ecological crisis
partially stemming from deforestation, both paths intend toward a new old forest, a
return to a perceived native forest lost in the wake of modern forestry and the colonial
project from which it emerged.
This paper examines these two paths of contemporary reforestation in the efforts
of Taiwanese entrepreneur Lai Pei-yuan and Japanese botanist Miyawaki Akira against
an Anthropocenic background of environmental change stemming from human activity.
These two figures follow diverging paths toward a new old forest, as both Miyawaki and
Lai base their rhetoric in restorative reforestation, where the reintroduction of native
arboreal species to the forests of their respective islands is seen as a means of return to
ecological stability. In other words, both men actively participate in the humanity activity
of forest management in order to return nature to a more authentic state, one that
seemingly recreates an ecological stability that predates human management. Within the
shared history and colonial legacy of Japan and Taiwan, both Lai and Miyawaki strive
for similar outcomes, yet their approaches necessarily find distinct vernacular voices.
Lai’s reforestation project is tied to a traditional aesthetics, and celebrates an
enchantment with the sensory appreciation of the forests of Taiwan. Miyawaki, on the
other hand, works against the traditional aesthetic appreciation of Japanese forests,
viewing said aesthetics as a threat to ecological stability. Considering the fact that modern
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forestry, as outlined in Forestry of Japan, was, from the early stages of its development,
bound up in aesthetics, Lai and Miyawaki’s differing relationships to traditional
aesthetics are tied together in the aftermath of aesthetically justified mismanagement of
their respective homes. Temporally speaking, the planting of trees and designing of
forests is always, in part, a creative project, with a necessary projection into the future.
Such an engagement with the rehabilitation of local ecologies is an engagement with
landscape. As such, the rehabilitation of forests in both Taiwan and Japan becomes bound
up in questions of aesthetics, where aestheticized landscapes can either be mobilized or
rejected in efforts to secure a future borne of ecological stability. Between Lai and
Miyawaki, the aesthetic path toward this shared goal diverges in such a manner, and is
the subject of this investigation.
Enchantment as a Response to Crisis: Lai Pei-yuan
Although the growth of modern forestry in Taiwan stems from the Japanese
occupation from 1895 to 1945, according to Karen Laura Thornber, massive deforestation
begins in Taiwan following the population increase associated with the arrival of the
KMT at the end of World War II. She writes, “This growth, combined with rapid
industrialization and economic development under a military dictatorship that
smothered opposition and harshly punished dissenters, led to unchecked exploitation of
the island’s ecosystems… Demand for wood and foreign exchange increased sharply…
resulting in several decades of hyperdeforestation” (85). Taiwanese environmental
activism in the 1980s contributed to a growing awareness of ecological degradation,
culminating in a governmental ban on the logging of primeval forests in 1989 2.
Lai Pei-yuan, owner of a successful transportation and cargo business in Taiwan,
purchased his first plot of land in 1985, and has, according to Joyce Huang, spent the
equivalent of $64.5 million (US) in the past thirty-odd years “reviving the formerly barren
and polluted landscape, removing more than 60,000 metric tons of garbage and planting
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upwards of 300,000 trees, all of which are native species like Taiwan cattle camphor and
Taiwan incense cedar.3” The beginnings of Lai’s reforestation project thus fall in line with
the environmental activism of the 1980s, yet Lai’s work is a solitary project, largely devoid
of political rhetoric or social engagement. Lai plants each tree by hand, with the help of
his sons. Known locally as “shuwang,” or “King of Trees,” Lai sees his reforestation efforts
in the context of deep time, as he focuses his rhetoric on a future that exceeds his
immediate family. Benjamin Yeh quotes Lai in a 2013 profile written for the Agence
France-Presse, “ If I was to safeguard Taiwan, I would have to plant trees,” adding later,
“I felt I wanted to do something which could last for generations to come.4” One of Lai’s
three stated policies, in addition to never cutting, buying, or selling his trees, is to leave
no inheritance for his children5. Lai’s concern is directed toward the island of Taiwan, the
land, trees, and people of the Taiwanese nation state, with his immediate family given no
special preference, at least in terms of economic futurity. Lai’s view of the longue durée
minimizes the immediacy of genealogical ties and maximizes instead the interconnected
ties of ecosystem in Taiwan.
Lai’s mention of a desire to “safeguard” Taiwan through reforestation places his
efforts within an environmental consciousness that looks to the planting of trees as an
important component of carbon sequestration, and thus a response to the threat of climate
change in the age of the Anthropocene. According to Huang, “Lai’s 300,000 specimens
(of trees) absorb a minimum of around 1,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. 6” As
recent reports have stated, levels of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere have, in
2016, surpassed 400 parts per million, a potentially key threshold in terms of rising
atmospheric temperatures7. This threshold is believed to mark the point from which it
will be difficult, if not impossible, to return to climate stability. Lai’s own rhetoric,
however, more favors the aesthetic than the scientific, and engages in the affect of
enchantment rather than anxiety. He speaks of his enchantment with the forest
ecosystems in which he works, referring to incense cedar, beech, stout camphor, and
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juniper trees as the “treasures of Taiwan’s forests” in a 2015 documentary film promoting
his authorized biography. Later in the film he remarks on the animal life his newly
reconstituted forests have attracted: “We have long horn beetles, wagtails, and fireflies.
Millions of fireflies. It’s very pretty in the evening. 8” Lai’s rhetoric is an eco-aesthetic tied
to the native arboreal species of Taiwan, highlighting nonhumans for human enjoyment.
It is rhetoric that elevates aesthetic appreciation of the forest in a consideration of
mitigating ecological crisis, whether or not that goal is made explicit.
Lai’s rhetoric is bound up in topophilia, described by Yi-Fu Tuan in his book of
the same name as “an affective bond between people and place or setting” (4). As Tuan
makes clear, Lai’s topophilic project works through affect, occasioning an aesthetic
enchantment within his forests. Lai mobilizes this sensual appreciation of the forest
towards his efforts to rehabilitate Taiwanese ecology and return the land to its originary
forested abundance, as was described in the pages of Forestry of Japan. In Lai’s project,
this attempted return to a past condition for the sake of a “safe” future can be sensually
and affectually appreciated in the present. In planting native trees, Lai strives toward a
new old forest, a vision of a future-return that highlights the beauty of Taiwan’s forests.
Beauty is the cornerstone of Lai’s project, and is posited as a countermeasure to the
aesthetically unpleasing effects of deforestation.
This aesthetic turn, in which objects of the past are offered as a potential response
to contemporary crisis, fits within the paradigm of Taiwanese nature writing (ziran shuxie
/ziran xiezuo), a literary genre stemming from the environmental movements of the 1980s.
As Thornber explains, “Many of these narratives celebrate Taiwan’s natural beauty and
biodiversity… In the 1980s nature writers often turned to their classical counterparts,
seeking inspiration from depictions of beautiful landscapes in texts by Zhuangzi, Wang
Wei, Tao Yuanming, and others” (89). These returns to the canonical aesthetics of
enchantment helped affect real world change in the aforementioned ban on logging of
primeval forests. The past, in other words, was mobilized aesthetically by Taiwanese
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Nature Writers in their contemporary present for the sake of securing an ecologicallysound future.
This mobilization of traditional aesthetics to address contemporary crisis is indeed
at play in Lai’s project as well. Videos promoting Yundao Kafei, the company owned and
operated by Lai’s oldest son Lai Chien-chung (with Lai’s blessing and cooperation),
which sells coffee beans grown within Lai’s forests, focus on scenic images of mistcovered mountainsides seen from high aerial perspectives, close-ups of leaves and
flowers, as well as birds perched on flowering-branches9. Packaging for Yundao Kafei’s
coffee beans prominently displays a painted forest landscape on the bottom third of its
surface, with a calligraphic rendering of the company’s name in the relatively large
amount of empty space above. These enchanting images evoke the traditional aesthetics
of Shanshuihua, or Chinese Landscape Painting. As Mai-Mai Sze writes in The Tao of
Painting, “The usual proportions of sky and earth in a Chinese landscape painting allow
a conspicuous amount of space for sky, mist, and voids in relation to that given to
mountains, trees, and other terrestrial features” (92). Yundao Kafei turns to these
classically-influenced landscapes in an effort to sell coffee beans, the sale of which
supports the planting of yet more trees. These traditional aesthetics, affectually mobilized
for the sake of enchantment, are thus important to Lai’s project, in which an originary
forest can be appreciated within traditional aesthetic paradigms. Lai’s forests are indeed
new old forests, where the stress falls on the “old.” They are an attempt at a return to a
kind of ideal prelapsarian version of nature predating modern forestry.
Thus while one of Lai’s stated principles is to never sell any of his trees, he is still
actively engaged in a commodification of his new old forests. Yundao Kafei markets its
coffee beans by promoting among which trees the coffee plants were grown, thus
enabling one to purchase “coffee grown under stout camphor trees,10” for example. Lai’s
forests have become a consumable product, one engaging the sense not only of sight but
also of taste, opening the affectual possibilities of enchantment beyond the visual register.
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It is a consumption borne of topophilia rather than exploitation, steeped in traditional
aesthetics, in which, according to a hand-drawn graphic on the Yundao Kafei website, the
coffee drinker is drawn into a self-sustaining cycle of consumption and reforestation11. In
providing a consumable experience of enchantment, Lai’s project engages in what I call
ecological-affect, or the feeling of having contributed positively to ecological health. For
consumers eager to mitigate the guilt associated with capitalist consumption in the age
of the Anthropocene, ecological-affect serves as a powerful method to simultaneously
work within the economic structures that have helped contribute to ecological
degradation and potentially work against the effects of such degradation.
The aforementioned circular diagram on the Yundao Kafei website brings the
consumer into a seemingly sustainable cycle of consumption and reforestation. In
purchasing Yundao Kafei’s beans, or visiting their café, the heavily-wooded interior of
which is decorated with photos and paintings of forested landscapes, and having a cup
of coffee served in a small mug resembling a tree stump, consumers enter into a kind of
surrogate-topophilic relationship to Lai’s forests, and by extension to a kind of ideal
originary Taiwan. Through ecological-affect, Yundao Kafei rethinks the possibilities of the
commodification of Taiwan’s forestlands, offering an affective release of anxiety
stemming from ecological crisis. In this way, Lai’s forests become an affectual product
relying on traditional aesthetics to return consumers to a time and place before
hyperdeforestation. This type of commodification sells more an affective experience of
the forest than the physical material of the forest itself, save the coffee beans harvested
from among Lai’s trees.
These appeals to traditional aesthetics and the experience of enchantment,
originating in Lai’s topophilic relationship to Taiwan, give rise to a notion of futurity
challenged by the recent reports concerning the irreversibility of climate change. Within
Lai’s forests there appears to be a future for Taiwan that is both “safe” and, just as
importantly, beautiful. The path Lai has taken to his new old forest, one equally steeped
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in a preservationist rhetoric that resists economic gain and a relishing of traditional
aesthetics aimed at marketing a consumable product, is predicated on an aura of
sincerity. Lai’s personal dedication to his forests of hand planted trees is itself, ultimately,
an important part of the topophilic enchantment offered for sale by Yundao Kafei. For as
much as Lai’s rhetoric and Yundao Kafei’s marketing materials attempt to minimize the
human in relation to nature, as indeed the aesthetics of Shanshuihua did, the figure of Lai
Pei-yuan looms large over the forests of Taiwan, assuming the role of an aesthetically
inclined steward of an island in whose forests he finds the future.
Against a “Native” Grain: Miyawaki Akira
Japanese botanist Miyawaki Akira has taken a different path toward reforestation.
Miyawaki, a prolific author and researcher, was the recipient of the 2006 Blue Planet
Award for “establishing a theory to restore and to reconstruct forests based on the
concept of ‘Potential natural vegetation’ and by implementing the theory succeeded in
reconstructing disaster-preventing environment-conserving forests and tropical forest,
contributed in restoring the green on earth. 12 ” This theory, known as the “Miyawaki
Method,” has been researched and applied beyond Japan, in Southeast Asia, Europe, and
South America, and served as the basis for the Mitsubishi Corporation’s reforestation
efforts in Malaysia13. Unlike Lai’s efforts, which remain tied to the land of Taiwan and
rely on Lai’s own hands to reforest, Miyawaki’s project is transnational, at times
corporate, and internationally recognized. In the wake of the March 11, 2011 Tōhoku
earthquake and tsunami in North Eastern Japan, Miyawaki’s work has taken on a
newfound sense of urgency and importance, with the threat of anthropogenic
environmental crisis reaching new levels of public consciousness both domestically
within Japan as well as abroad.
Yet it is in the application of the Miyawaki Method domestically in Japan that
Miyawaki’s project diverges most clearly from Lai’s. While both posit reforestation as an
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important “safeguard,” to use Lai’s word, against ecological crisis, in contrast to Lai,
Miyawaki advocates for a turn away from the traditional aesthetics associated with
Japanese forests. According to Miyawaki, many of the beloved and traditionally
aestheticized coniferous evergreen trees of Japan are actually non-native, and as such,
harmful to the archipelago’s ecosystems, and as such a reintroduction of deciduous and
broadleaf coniferous trees is paramount. In a short documentary profiling Miyawaki’s
work in North Eastern Japan following the devastation of the Tōhoku earthquake and
tsunami, this break from traditional aesthetics is made clear from the outset. The video,
titled Making Forests of Life for the Ones You Love: "The Green Tide Embankment," begins
with the assertion that the “popular scene of Japanese shores,” the hakusha seishō, or
beaches of white sand and coniferous evergreen forests, provided no protection against
the March 11th tsunami, while broadleaf trees of the area, in particular the tabunoki,
withstood the tsunami, creating a barrier that protected several buildings from
destruction. Miyawaki refers to these broadleaf species as “authentic” trees, native to
Japan but now largely absent from Japanese forests.
While nearly 70% of Japan’s land mass today is covered in forests14, this is largely
a product of Japan’s postwar exploitation of forests throughout Southeast Asia 15. 40% of
Japan’s contemporary forests are plantation forests, comprised mostly of coniferous
Japanese cypress (hinoki), cedar (sugi), and larch (akamatsu) 16 . Architect and critic
Kawazoe Noboru writes of the “natural characteristics possessed by the Japanese”17 that,
combined with the malleability of these conifers, led these species to a preferred position
as raw material in traditional Japanese architecture. The first of these “natural
characteristics,” according to Kawazoe, is “a love of straight things. The Japanese prefer
straightforward things, and hate those that twist and turn” (110, translation mine).
Japanese cypress and cedar are embodiments of this aesthetic ideal, as they stand tall,
straight, and uniform in Japan’s ordered plantation forests. For Kawazoe, the overlap of
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material pliability and satisfaction of “natural characteristics” has had a “strong influence
on Japanese aesthetics” (109).
It is not a coincidence that this statement echoes the opening of Forestry in Japan,
as the “refined aesthetic ideas” referred to in its opening passage are demonstrated a few
pages later in a photograph of a “pure” cypress forest in the Kiso region of Japan’s largest
island (insert between pgs 34 and 35). Historically, the cypress forests in Kiso have
provided the raw material to periodically rebuild the Ise Shrine, often considered the
pinnacle of traditional Japanese architectural aesthetics 18. In short, any consideration of
traditional Japanese aesthetics must consider the historical importance of coniferous
evergreens as not only raw material for architecture, but also as embodying the aesthetic
ideal of “straightforwardness,” an aesthetic sensibility that carries over into the
uniformity of the hakusha seishō coastal forests. Writer Shiga Shigetaka, in his bestselling1894 treatise Nihon fūkeiron (Theory of Japanese Landscape), writes in detail of the
beauty of hakusha seishō, likening the natural scenery comprised of “a solid line of white
sand and lofty green pines” to decorated lacquer 19, reading the landscape itself as an
aesthetic object, and not only something to be aestheticized through artistic reproduction.
Again, any engagement with the forests of Japan necessarily meets aesthetics head on.
Miyawaki, with his turn away from the hakusha seishō on the grounds of scientific inquiry,
is no exception.
In rejecting these coniferous green pine trees, deeming them not actually native to
Japanese soil and in fact dangerous to Japan’s sustainability, Miyawaki proposes a
different kind of new old forest from the one Lai imagines. Miyawaki’s longue durée
stretches even farther back, to a forest that not only predates unsustainable human
extraction and management, but also predates human aesthetic appreciation. Rather than
relying on enchantment to fight exploitation, Miyawaki actively turns from enchantment
toward authenticity, casting his gaze toward a sustainable future rather than the pleasure
of an immediate sensory experience. Miyawaki’s rhetoric, not surprisingly, is more
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scientific than aesthetic, and favors ecological-action over ecological-affect. Within
Miyawaki’s new old forest, the stress falls on the “new,” as it calls for a new orientation
toward Japan’s forests, a new model of topophilia in which aesthetic enchantment is
sacrificed to a sense of safety and futurity.
Yet Miyawaki’s project must necessarily look backwards as well. For Lai, the
lapsarian moment is fairly clear, for it is the introduction of modern forestry by the
Japanese colonial government that marks the beginning of a fall from Taiwan’s originary
forested abundance. Yet for Miyawaki, such a timeline is complicated by the traditional
aesthetic importance of “inauthentic” arboreal species. In other words, it is not
deforestation in Japan per se to which Miyawaki is responding, but rather a
“misforestation” that has left Japan’s coastlines vulnerable. Thus Miyawaki must cast his
glance further back in order to find an originary state, to a prelapsarian forest that
predates aesthetic appreciation and intervention.
It is Miyawaki’s contention that the makeup of these authentic forests can be
glimpsed in chinju no mori, or sacred forests which surround village shrines. According
to Miyawaki, nativist religious beliefs, which he refers to by the umbrella term Shintō,
allowed for localized forests to remain untouched due to taboo, a kind of topohilia borne
of fear rather than enchantment. As he writes in The Healing Power of Forests, “in Shinto,
the symbols for the eight hundred myriads of divinities are found in nature, especially in
large, ancient trees and dense, luxuriant forests, which are feared, respected, and
revered” (61). Because of the spiritual significance afforded these forests, forestry
activities were prohibited under the threat of “divine retribution” (62). As such, the
composition of these chinju no mori forests as they stand today can serve as a living artifact
of authenticity.
Miyawaki explains the composition of these forests thusly:
Most chinju-no-mori (sic) were evergreen broadleaf forests, like those that formerly
occupied most of the southern half of Japan. The main trees found in such forests
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are castanopsis species, laurel-family trees, evergreen oaks, and camellia, all of
which are evergreen and have taproots that go straight down to great depths. Thus
they are not at all disturbed by typhoons or earthquakes and have proven their
worth as barriers against the spread of fire, as in the Kobe earthquake of 1995.
(Healing Power of Forests 62)
Notably absent from the list Miyawaki outlines above are the trees most commonly
associated with Shintō aesthetics, namely Japanese cedar and cypress, trees Kawazoe
renders “straightforward.” By this logic, the “pure” cypress forests spoken of in Forestry
of Japan are far from pure in terms of authenticity; they are far from native compositions.
They are, like the hakusha seishō, aesthetically planned compositions.
The varieties most commonly designated sacred In Shinto belief as shinboku or
yorishiro (abodes of the Gods)20, including cedar, are also absent from the list of trees
native to Japan in the chinju no mori, and thus are absent from the immediate proximity
of the shrines said to have preserved the native surrounding forests. Yet the implication
is that it is precisely Shintō belief that has preserved these native forests. Thus a seeming
paradox emerges in a consideration of the chinju no mori; traditional aesthetics tied to
Shintō belief are both embraced and rejected in the turn to the chinju no mori. The
authentic arboreal species found in chinju no mori survive because of Shintō ideology, yet
are not the species most often associated with said ideology. Insofar as the use of cypress
and cedar in Shinto architecture has come to take on a sacral quality, this paradox speaks
more to the cultural amnesia concerning the originary sacral quality of the native species
of the chinju no mori.
This paradox is further complicated by the use of State Shinto ideology in the
colonial project at large, in which Shintō belief was mobilized as a justification for war.
However, according to Aike P. Rots, the chinju no mori paradigm not only occasions the
potential of a return to a native forest, but also to native Shintō belief, free of the
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nationalistic ideology with which it has come to be strongly associated in the wake of
World War II. He writes, “a new generation of shrine priests has now come to the fore,
most of whom have little or no personal connection with war-related or ‘State Shinto’
imperialism but who are well familiar with the chinju no mori concept and the Shinto
environmentalist
paradigm”
(221).
This
refocused
concern
for
“Shinto
environmentalism” is a part of Miyawaki’s path to a new old forest, a vernacular element
of his scientific claims to the native status of the trees of the chinju no mori.
Published prior to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, The Healing Power of
Forests uses the Kobe earthquake as a case study in the sustainability and safety of the
native arboreal varieties of chinju no mori. More recently, as mentioned above, in direct
response to crises of March 11, 2011, Miyawaki has proposed reforesting the coastline of
Japan with “authentic” native species such as tabunoki, oak, and wild camellia, the later
two varietals representative of chinju no mori. This reforested coastline is meant to serve
as a wall to protect against future tsunamis, as the strong, deep roots of these native
species can help withstand the ocean’s force. Miyawaki serves as Assistant Director to
the Chinju no Mori Project, an organization working towards securing Japan’s coastline
borders with native trees. Two of the three questions listed on the frequently asked
questions page of the Chinju no Mori Project website ask about the possibility of donating
individually collected acorns and donating saplings to the organization. In both cases,
the answers make it clear only specific varieties, native to specific regions, can be used to
secure the land against natural disaster. The Chinju no mori Project is an imaginative
project, and as such seeks to solidify a new aesthetic appreciation of the coastline forests.
Instead of an enchantment with the hakusha seishō, Miyawaki’s aesthetics stem from an
affective sense of safety and security in the face of natural disaster. While volunteers are
prohibited from donating acorns and saplings, they are given the potential for futurity.
The uninterrupted coastline forest of native varieties imagined by the Chinju no Mori
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Project, which Miyawaki calls the Heisei Forest, is meant to last for the next nine thousand
years, or until the next ice age21.
The truly longue durée of the Heisei Forest thus looks exceptionally far into the
future, anticipating, in the mention of “the next age,” potential non-anthropogenic
climate change on a scale that mitigates anxiety. But where Lai’s sense of futurity
imagines a stability grounded in equilibrium, where more trees will help reduce CO2
levels and counteract climate change, Miyawaki’s project, far from relishing in the
enchanting aesthetics of the forested landscape, mobilizes new old forests as a utilitarian
safeguard against a perceived literal threat, namely the inevitability of future tsunamis.
By walling Japan in with dense forestland, Miyawaki affectually reinforces the
destructive and unpredictable power of nature, while at the same time positing a natural
defense linked to Japan’s early spiritual beliefs, borne from awe, itself a kind of topophilic
affect. In Forestry of Japan, the forests of the Japanese islands serve as an impetus
outwards, toward colonial expansion. For Miyawaki, the forests he imagines and works
on creating serve as an impetus inwards, rooting humans closer to the land, walled in by
a sense of security said to last long after the human lifespan. Like Lai, Miyawaki also sees
a future within Japan’s forests, or rather, a future of Japan as within forests.
Conclusion
Anthropocenic thinking, with its elevation of human action to a geological scale,
precipitates as a perceived threat to the Earth’s environment writ large, essentially
positing a vulnerability shared among humans and nonhumans beyond national borders.
What such thinking potentially overlooks is both topographical specificity in terms of
ecological damage, as well as the necessity of vernacular responses tied not only to
particular ecosystems but also tied to particular histories and the aesthetics that both
inform and grow out of these histories. The history of modern forestry in East Asia grows
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out of Japan’s colonial project, and responses in the wake of its contributions to
deforestation and climate change are inseparable from this history.
The shared colonial legacy of Taiwan and Japan bind Lai Pei-yuan and Miyawaki
Akira together. Both envision a future full of forests by imagining and attempting to
recreate an old forest that stretches far into the past, before the colonization of Taiwan in
1895, or the publication of Forestry of Japan for Japanese-British Exhibition of 1910. Forestry
of Japan reports that at the time of its writing, “the ratio of forests against the total area of
land… in Formosa (is) 80%” (12), while at the same time, the texts notes that in Japan,
“The political revolution in the beginning of the Meiji Era (1868) produced a disastrous
effect upon the preservation of the forests. The forests throughout the country were
mercilessly cut down” (85). That forest cover in contemporary Taiwan has fallen to a state
lower than that of contemporary Japan demonstrates the importance of a consideration
of the legacy of Japanese colonialism, and the ways in which anthropogenic effects have
not been uniform across borders. As such, the reforestation projects of Lai and Miyawaki
grow from a shared history but take on differing approaches to address differing notions
of crisis stemming from environmental degradation. Their vernacular reforestation
projects, as well as their vernacular topohilias from which such projects emerge, require
a vision of the Anthropocene that can accommodate difference and contextually.
However, although Miyawaki and Lai’s paths toward new old forests diverge,
they follow a similar logic. In Lai’s investment in re-enchantment there is a link to the
traditional aesthetic appreciation of certain forms of landscape. In Miyawaki’s
investment in protection against impending threat there is a link to the traditional
reverence and fear of certain forms of landscape, what Rots has called “Shintō
Environmentalism.” To call Lai an idealist and Miyawaki a pragmatist would be missing
the point, as would simply drawing a line between Lai’s entrepreneurship and
Miyawaki’s scientism. Rather, in both cases, these are distinct vernacular projects,
operating in response to a localized history as well a shared history, that look to makes
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sense of the future and its relationship to the past. Within this relationship is the human
relationship to nonhuman nature, one growing from and dependent on aesthetics. In a
desired return to a new old forest is the necessity of a return to a new old aesthetics,
regardless of whether the stress falls on the “old” or on the “new.”
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Notes
1
See Totman, p. 145.
2
See Yeh.
3
See Huang.
4
See Yeh.
5
See http://www.coffeetree.tw/article_cat-35.html
6
See Huang.
7
See Schwartz “A Milestone for Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/science/atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-400-ppm.html?_r=0
8
See “Taiwan Tree King--One Thousand Year's Promise.”
9
See, for example, “Yundao –the Path to our Coffee.”
10
See http://www.coffeetree.tw/category.html
11
See http://www.coffeetree.tw/shop/story.php
12
See the Asashi Glass Foundation website: http://www.af-info.or.jp/en/blueplanet/list.html
13
See Restoration of Tropical Forest Ecosystems: Proceedings of the Symposium held on
October 7–10, 1991, Leith and Lohman, Eds., available at http://www.mitsubishicorp.com/jp/
en/csr/contribution/earth/activities03/activities03-02.html
14
See http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS
15
For an explanation of Japanese’s contribution to the deforestation of Southeast Asia, see Peter
Deauvergne’s Shadows in the Forest: Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia (MIT
Press, 1997)
16
See Japan for Sustainability’s “About the Condition of Japanese Forests:”
http://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_id027771.html
17
In the Japanese: “Nihonjin ga honrai motteita seikaku.”
18
See, for example, Isozak Arata’s “The Problematic called ‘Ise’” from Japn-ness in
Architecture (MIT Press, 2006) for a discussion of Ise’s aesthetic reception through time.
19
See Part 2, page 111 of Shiga Shigetaka’s Nihon Fūkeiron (Kodansha, 1976).
20
For a discussion of the question of the sacred nature and artificiality of trees as yorishiro see
Nold Egenter’s The Sacred Trees around Goshonai/Japan, in Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 40,
No. 2 (1981), pp. 191-212.
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21
See “Making Forests of Life for the Ones You Love ‘The Green Tide Embankment.”
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