officials like Ohbayashi’s grandfather acquired status and badges of office—the right to wear swords and to use a family name in public—and minor stipends paid in rice, so for all intents and purposes they became low-ranking samurai for their trouble. And trouble it was. They discovered that policing the lord’s forest was nearly impossible, for villagers always found surreptitious means to gain access to what they understandably felt was their hereditary gathering ground.
The job included maintaining boundary markers and signs, preventing theft and unauthorized charcoal burning, and monitoring sanctioned logging activities. But when the official focus shifted from prohibitive conservation to large-scale replanting, the nature of the forest patrols changed as well, and Ohbayashi’s job is now quite a bit easier than either his grandfather’s or his father’s. His forest patrols still keep an eye out for fire, storm damage, and theft, but these activities are more likely to be performed communally by the villagers instead of by officials, who now take a more supervisory role. More importantly, through the forest patrols and by acting as paid woodsmen during their off season, the villagers like Shinichi and his neighbors take an active part in nurturing seedlings and maintaining the overall health of the forest.
Regenerative forestry as practiced so successfully relies on the application of agricultural knowledge, much of it derived from ancient practices refined over centuries and handed down by woodsmen, farmers, and gardeners, collated and supplemented with new knowledge and recent experience, and disseminated through printed texts. It builds on existing awareness of the role of healthy forests in maintaining viable watersheds, and on experience in using silviculture to control rivers, limit erosion, and protect arable land. Though the main purpose is to produce large quantities of construction material, the degree to which timber forests, broadleaf forests, grassland, waterways, and arable land form an integral whole whose parts must be kept in balance is reflected in the techniques adopted for germinating, nurturing, harvesting, and transporting the timber. It is an ongoing process of incremental adjustment, monitoring, accommodation, and readjustment, with ample provision for feedback from many sources. And this process, difficult and imperfect though it is, plays a tremendous role supporting a high-quality life for city dwellers and peasants alike.
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