Japan's Abandoned
Satoyama Forests
Jane Singer
MORE THAN TWO-THIRDS of the Japanese land mass is managed satoyama forests. These woodlands provide some trenchant lessons on the loss of biodiversity and our need to shoulder responsibility for ecosystems that we have remade for our own purposes. To learn how the Japanese have managed to steward sustainable, variegated woodlands over the centuries despite one of the world’s highest population densities — and how those same forests have been despoiled over the last few decades of postwar economic growth — we spoke with Fukamachi Katsue, a forest expert and associate professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies.
Jane Singer, a long-time Kyoto resident, is a writer and graduate school professor specializing in sustainable development and environmental education.
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