JAPAN.
Forestry of Japan, 1904, published by the Imperial Bureau of Forestry in connection with the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and a reprint with additions in 1910, contains most of the information utilized above.
Aus den Waldungen Japans, by Dr. Heinrich Mayr, 1891, gives a full account of the forest geography, which is also to be found in J. J. Rein, Japan, 1886.
Der Wald in Japan, an article by Dr. Hefele in Forstwissenschaftliches Centralblatt, 1903, gives an insight into forest conditions from the point of view of a forester.
A very clear analysis of the development of property rights is to be found in an article by Dr. Zentaro Kawase in Allgemeine Forst- und Jagdzeitung, 1894.
An article in Zeitschrift für Forst- und Jagdwesen from the pen of Prof. H. Matsuno, the first professional forester of Japan, gives a brief account of the development of forestry, especially in earlier times.
A report by Special Canadian Trade Commissioner W. T. R. Preston, 1908, contains valuable statistics on the lumber trade.
The modernization of this remarkable island empire of Niphon (the native name), which began in 1868, included the organization of a forest department after German models. Curiously enough, there are other noteworthy points of similarity to be found in the historic development of forestry in Germany and Japan.
The empire comprises four larger islands—Kiushiu, Shikoku, Hondo or Honshiu, and Hokkaido or Yesso—and a host of smaller ones, stretching in a chain of nearly 3,000 miles north and south along the Asiatic shore, the width of land being nowhere over 200 miles. It comprises an area of nearly 150,000 square miles, with a population approximating 50 million, largely engaged in fisheries and other sea industries.
The islands are of volcanic origin—part of the “girdle of fire” which reaches from the Alaska peninsula through the Philippines to the Antilles—with many active craters, subject to frequent disastrous earthquakes and tidal waves; mountainous, with numerous ranges of high hills and with lofty central ridges, with numerous short rivers, apt to turn into treacherous torrents, while hurricanes and waterspouts, typhoons and equinoctial gales sweep the surrounding seas frequently.
The soil is nowhere particularly fertile, but the patient and painstaking labor of the Japanese has brought every available foot of it—little more than 10% is arable—into producing condition, wherever the climate compensates for the infertility, especially in the most densely populated part, the southern half of Hondo.
Extending through 30 degrees of latitude, the climate naturally varies from the tropical one of Formosa, through all variations of the temperate, to the alpine one of the high mountains and the nearly arctic one of the Kurile islands. The Japan current skirting the eastern coast, and the mountain ranges, with elevations generally not exceeding 6,000 feet, occasionally up to over 13,000 feet, which cut off the dry continental west winds, also produce great climatic variations between east and west coasts. In general, however, the climate of the whole empire is characterized by a high percentage of relative humidity and ample rainfall, especially during the hot season, producing luxuriant growth.