That may be a bit of an overstatement. But Onishi’s runny nose is yet another reminder of the ills afflicting Japan’s woeful economy. The prevalence of kafunsho is a direct result of decades of poor timber planning: as the country built itself into a powerhouse after World War II, vast tracts of natural-growth forest were replaced with cedar for construction. Now the bottom has dropped out of cedar prices because of slackening demand, meaning loggers have little incentive to cut down the trees. And unfortunately for Japan’s allergy sufferers, the mature trees are just now reaching the age when they release the most pollen. Two years ago Tokyo estimated that kafunsho cost the nation more than $2 billion a year in lowered productivity and medical bills–a sum the sluggish economy can hardly afford.
Japanese have long had a special attachment to cedars. Fast-growing, durable, disease-resistant and straight, they have been used for building shrines, temples and homes for more than 1,000 years. During the Meiji Restoration, the government urged forest workers to replace natural broadleaf trees like beech and oak with needle-leaf trees, primarily cedar (cypress was the second favorite). As brisk demand for cedar lumber continued through World War II and the postwar rehabilitation, Japan cut down more than half of its natural trees. The government-directed replanting policy was maintained through the 1960s and 1970s when the economy rapidly expanded.
Yet while vast cedar forests were growing across Japan–mature trees aren’t harvested until they’re 30 years old–the Japanese economy was shrinking. Demand has plummeted: in 2000 Japanese cedar cost $59 per cubic meter, compared with $152 at its peak in 1981.
At the same time, the industry has been plagued by high labor costs and an aging work force (a third of Japan’s 70,000 forest workers are over 65). That has made it cheaper for Japan to import nearly 80 percent of its wood rather than harvest its own cedar, which is about 20 percent pricier than its direct competition–hemlock from the United States. “Japanese have neglected to make efforts to be competitive, like developing better-quality lumber,” says Kenzo Tajima, a forestry consult-ant in Saitama. Instead the country is stuck with 7 million hectares of needle-leaf forest that is too expensive to cut down.
Environmentalists are beginning to weigh the additional cost of having wiped out most of the country’s natural-growth forests. Decades of aggressive replacement of indigenous broadleaf trees with cedars have left the nation’s ecosystems confused, says Masahito Yoshida, the executive director of the Nature Conservation Society in Japan. For example, Japanese bears, which eat acorns and hibernate in broadleaf forests, are now considered endangered in western Japan–and are extinct in the southern island of Kyushu. Other herbivores like Japanese serows (a type of antelope) have thrived on cedar saplings, leading to overbreeding.
But the problem that concerns Japanese most remains their annual sneezing fits. The government has spent millions of dollars looking for a long-term solution, and in fact Japanese scientists have developed a species of cedar that emits less pollen. No one is willing to wait until those saplings grow to maturity, though. In the meantime, to bring relief to allergy sufferers, Tokyo is planning to single out and chop down the mature cedar trees this summer.
Experts are also looking at other factors that might be intensifying the allergies, such as air pollution from diesel exhaust, Western-style housing that keeps pollen indoors and the changing Japanese diet (eating meat or dairy products is thought to make one more vulnerable to allergies). Yoshida points out that more city residents suffer from kafunsho than those who live in the countryside, possibly because paved roads do not absorb pollen the way natural earth does. The true culprit, though, may be the same misguided government planning that has led much of Japan to be paved over in concrete, not greenery. That ailment may be even more difficult to cure.
