Packed Like Sardines – Density is Good

Yeah, they have been testing that sardine theory in small island country called Japan. *76 percent of Japan's land area is covered with forest. Since many japansese are of the shinto religion which considers forest sacred to the extent that is has been called the religion of the forest.

*http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/docs/_ref/publications/newsonline/29/japanforest.htm

Jim, Shinto really doesn't have much to do with protecting trees. It's a volcanic island with very steep mountains throughout most of the country. Can't really do much with that land except use it as forest. I spent a few harrowing days working for a Japanese logging company, and believe me, there was nothing sacred in the way they tore up the forest we were in. They also can only produce about 25% of their consumption, so they also tear up forests around the world to feed their domestic economy.

A trip to Japan usually clears up any notions people have about the Japanese being "nature harmonious".

Joseph are you trying to claim that one of the most technologically advance countries on the planet can't figure out how to build on forest. i understand that it is a "volanic island with very steep mountains" but any land that can sustain a forest can be made into human living space. Real estate in japan is supremely expensive, clearly there must be cultural factors that lead to a preservation of these forests. I did not mean to imply that all Japanese were shinto, or that shinto was the only reason for their preservation of space. For the sake of pure argument, if many but not all japanese are shinto and if shintos revere the forest, then it follows that it could be possible that the japanese lumber company consisted of non-shintos and or backsliding shintos.

Perhaps someone can enlighten us both as to a more nuanced understanding of why japan can remain 75% forest. I think that finding an answer would be a great step towards understanding how we can develop global consensus towards a greener world.

"Joseph are you trying to claim that one of the most technologically advance countries on the planet can't figure out how to build on forest."

No, I'm telling you that they can't build on their very steep mountains.

"but any land that can sustain a forest can be made into human living space"

It's not a matter of whether something can be done, but rather what it costs and how effective it is. I'm sure we could put housing on the top of Mt Everest, but it wouldn't be a very smart thing to do.

"Real estate in japan is supremely expensive, clearly there must be cultural factors that lead to a preservation of these forests."

No, there needn't be a cultural explanation. As I've told you, a Japanese person doesn't have some internal cultural guard against chopping down a tree or clearing a whole forest. Since they import 75% of their wood, it indicates that they can't possibly sustain themselves with their own forest resources -- or at the very least that foreign sources are much cheaper to access. Japan is one of the most constructed, if not the most constructed, major nations on the planet.

If you don't believe me, Alex Kerr seems to have a book on the subject called "Demons and Dogs":
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0809039435

"For the sake of pure argument, if many but not all japanese are shinto and if shintos revere the forest, then it follows that it could be possible that the japanese lumber company consisted of non-shintos and or backsliding shintos."

Come on, Jim - this isn't working. I hope you're not being serious.

Religion doesn't play the role it plays in a place like the United States. Shinto is basically the folk beliefs of Japanese. It doesn't just revere trees - it reveres pretty much everything in nature as being divine. It doesn't mean Japanese people won't trash it, though. That's projecting the role of religion in your culture on to them.

Most Japanese people live what a Westerner might consider an atheistic or amoral life. Shinto retains a role in terms of performing certain rites, like marriage, and even does things like provide blessings for new cars. So, it's hardly a nature-loving religion that somehow guides the thoughts and morals of most Japanese people. It just doesn't work that way.

Buddhism, for example, plays a complementary role to Shintoism, having more to do specifically with the process and rituals of death. You'd be hard-pressed to even distinguish the two religions when you go there, as often you'll find shrines and temples intermixed.

You can read a nice little primer on all of this on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_of_Japan

"Perhaps someone can enlighten us both as to a more nuanced understanding of why japan can remain 75% forest. I think that finding an answer would be a great step towards understanding how we can develop global consensus towards a greener world."

I'm not sure what you would consider sufficiently nuanced, Jim, as I was an East Asian studies major in college with a Japan focus, have a masters degree in International Affairs with a Japan concentration, lived in Japan for 3 1/2 years, and had a Ministry of Education fellowship to study comparative energy and environmental policy in Japan for 18 months during my graduate studies. I've taken many courses in religion, history, language, etc. So, I think I'm in a pretty decent position to assess the fact that they have forests because they really can't do much else with their steep mountains. It's nothing esoteric or "cultural" or religious. It's geography.

Dear Joesph Willemssen Sahn,

I did not realize that Willemssen was a Japanese surname. From what part of Japan is your famiy.

I understand that you have East Asian studies major in college with a Japan fetish, IR masters etc. But I would really appreciate a point of view from a person with both Japanese ethnicity and citizenship.

My point of saying that the Japanese could build whereever a forest exists was made the in anticipation of your infantile Mount Everest analogy. Clearly a home on the top of Mount Everest would be unreasonable, but you also do not see forests on the peak of Everest either. I assert again that anywhere that a forest grows can be converted into homes.

Certain countries and cultures choose to develop their forests at with different aggendas. An excellant example is Haiti and the Dominican Republic which share halves of the same island. (clearly this is a simplification) The DRs approach to development was to preserve their green spaces in an attempt to retain value as a tourist destination. On the other hand Haiti due to more difficult economic/political situation have been destroying their green spaces in an attempt to survive short term. I think that the national character of a people can play a role in how they manage (or mismanage) their national resources. I think that disregarding national sentiments makes for a very poor academic understanding of such a situation.

Since I am open enought to concede that I do not know everything about this possibly insightful topic, I implore a Japanese person to give us insight.

Oh yeah, since you posted your whole resume, I thought I should tell you that I am a medical doctor, it's no job as a professional Asian fetishist but it is a living.

Have a good day, troll.

Jim, you're not one much for bedside manner, are you? How about toning down the confrontational nature of posts a little?

Dear Rod Edwards,

I will surely tone it down. I am seriously curious as to what various opinions different opinions people would have on the question why Japan can remain 75% forested whilst simultaneously having such a have such a dense population. I was hoping that there could be a broader discussion of how nations have been motivated to make green campaigns.

sincerely, Dr. Jim

P.S. I hold bedside manner with my patients to be very important, however Joseph Willemssen, is not my patient. Furthermore if you merely google "Joseph Willemssen" you can find numerous instances of him being much less cordial to others.

Jim, I think it's safe to say that as much as material conditions are often a result of beliefs in actions, that beliefs often arise from material necessities, if not more the latter.

In fact, the Japanese did and do value trees -- almost all of their buildings until the late 1800s were made of wood. Where do you think that wood came from?

Due to Japan's prosperity in the 1600s (and resulting population boom and personal projects for leaders such as ever-larger monuments and castles), logging increased and spread across the Japanese islands, until by the early 1700s there was nothing left on Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu except the forests left most inaccessible on steep slopes. Keep in mind that this happened because these kinds of environmental limits were new to the society (just like global warming is to ours). Japan also isolated itself from the world at that time, and thereby couldn't import wood from other countries. Heavy soil erosion resulted, followed by famines.

It was only then that Japanese society began to manage its forests by invoking Confucian principles of limiting consumption, and eventually replanting trees to bring balance between wood consumption and production. Sophisticated systems of management were put in place, including no-log zones and issuance of licenses to log. Wood was graded for particular usage.

I believe you can continue to argue for the one-dimensional view that Japanese forests are so well-protected because of their spiritual dedication to trees, but that view is neither fully reflective of what really happened, nor particularly instructive.

I will keep out of the religion and culture discussion, but I will point out one cultural bias I have experienced in my work: Americans often think the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) led the pack in protecting citizens from the potential risks of chemicals, but Japan was actually the first nation to implement a similar law--again the island factor caused them to see the human impact of chemical accumulation in nature sooner than the rest.

Hi Jim,

I think I can honestly say that I've rarely been more turned off by a person than I have been by you reading this thread. As another individual with an academic background in East Asian Studies, I very, very much resent the implication that a scholar of Japanese culture MUST be a fetishist. People like Joseph are out there trying to learn with and from others. If they weren't, everyone would be as apparently ignorant as you are about Japan. That would be such a pity.

sincerely,
Emi Sato

"P.S. I hold bedside manner with my patients to be very important, however Joseph Willemssen, is not my patient. Furthermore if you merely google "Joseph Willemssen" you can find numerous instances of him being much less cordial to others."

Wow, that's interesting, "jim". Why would someone I have never encountered, much less interacted with, somehow be out "researching" me and making judgments about me. I have people troll me on other blogs, too, using sock puppets who behave not unlike you (eg, mentioning "resumes" and the sort). What's also interesting is that all of these trolls use three letter names in lower case.

What a coincidence.

Guess we can't find much about you, since Googling "jim" won't really get us much. So we're left with the obvious answer that you're a child who should be out doing something constructive with his time instead of spewing endless illiterate rants and claiming to be a physician.

Keep on trollin' on, "jim". Hope you grow up soon, son.

My apologies for attracting the troll, everyone. I guess I make a good mark.

Anyway, on the topic of density, I really like that the study is getting beyond the notion of "thing efficiency" and rather looking at how a system of arrangements leads to much greater outcomes than trying to tweak the details within an inefficient system.

It'd be interesting to see some modeling about how to take Product Service System concepts (eg, carsharing) coupled with proximate design to reduce non-walking trips etc, coupled with things like shared dining and the like, then arrive at what the theoretical efficiency of such an arrangement would be relative to established averages in urban, suburban, and rural settings.

Dearest Joseph Sahn,

You are as paranoid as you are arrogant. Once you impuned my character by calling me a troll, then and only then did I google your name. To the best of my knowledge is no vast conspiracy of people with three letter lowercase names that is stalking you across blogs. Normally when I would encounter such claims, I would ask Do you also beleive that the TV newscasters are talkng to you through the TV set?

With regards to your beleif that people on other sites make comments about your resume, perhaps that is due to your lengthly (an unsolicited) description of your work experiences, undergraduate major with focus, your masters degree, the numbers of years that you lived in japan, and your fellowship. Describing such details on multiple sites will cause people to comment as to why you feel the need to post such information about yourself.

I am in fact a physician, thus I would never use my real identity on such a site since these days people are prone to google their prospective doctor's name. Honestly why would I falsely claim to be a physician in such a discussion about japan and ecology? If I were the mischevious child that you claim that I am, wouldn't it serve me better to be an authority in an area of expertise that was pertinent to the topic at hand?

Hey Emi,

Since you are another Asian fetishist and I am not of the Asian persuasion, I am not surprised that you "rarely been more turned off by a person than I have been by you reading this thread."

-dr.jim

nilhcan

please, jim, just let it go. that's what the japanese would do.

i had some thoughts to add on the subject but i can''t seem to get around the content filter.

Hi Hijiki,

Please try again to contribute. I am sincerely interested in the topic and by extension your thoughts on the matter.

I will let it go. I apolygize that I allowed my self to sidetracked by an individual whom I felt chose to condescend rather than explore ideas as equals.

sincerely,

Jim

P.S. What does "nilhcan" mean?

Jim,

I have no idea what that just meant. With all of your "the Japanese must respect the trees because they are an ancient tree-loving people" talk, the only one who sounds like a fetishist is you. Good job.

-Emi

On Shinto and Ecology,

Below is a condensation from an address given at Harvard University by an Harvard Anthropologist.

"The Shinto beliefs and attitudes toward nature which are relevant to the problem of environmental preservation include three key points.

First, great value is accorded sacred space and time, generally as shrines in groves, the boundaries of which are demarcated as distinct from the secular world.

The second point notes a close relation between nature, deities (kami), and human beings.Finally, the idea of purification is a key aspect of all ritual activity in Shinto. Purification (harae) is performed to reestablish order and balance between nature, humans, and deities. Regularly performed as part of all ritual, as well as on special occasions during the year, purification ceremonies counteract pollution (kegare). Harm done or accreted pollution can be neutralized by means of ritual purification. The latter, in particular, is a key dimension of the relationship between the Japanese and nature, which warrants “cultivation” and exploitation of the environment on the one hand, yet which on the other emphasizes the need to rectify imbalances between nature, humans, and deities."

Rosemarie Bernard is an anthropologist who has done research on Shinto ritual, specifically on the rites of renewal at the Grand Shrines of Ise, and on Japanese imperial ritual. From April 1993 to March 1994 she was an Information Officer in the Public Relations Section of Jingu Shicho (the bureaucracy that manages The Grand Shrines of Ise). She is currently a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. She is editing the forthcoming volume, Shinto and Ecology, in the CSWR/Harvard University Press World Religion and Ecology book series.

61.104/search?q=cache:uRcSNHWjMw4J:environment.harvard.edu/religion/religion/shinto/+shinto+religion+forest&hl=en

For a doctor, you sure have a lot of days of leisure.

No one is arguing that Shinto as a loosely defined set of religious principles has nothing to do with respect for nature. The paragraphs you excerpted from Prof. Bernard's talk, however, simply refer to a relationship between Shinto ideals and ecology. (I think one could find such a relationship in almost any animistic religious philosophy.) They do not argue anything even remotely related to the notion that the Japanese have conserved portions of their land *because* of these ideals. If Prof. Bernard tried to make that argument, I would have to argue against her on grounds too numerous to list here now, in spite of the fact she is a Harvard-trained anthropologist.

Dear Everyone,

This afternoon, a few seconds searching on google yeilded a Conference at Harvard on "Shinto and Ecology" among participants were eminent academics from around the globe. Apparently I find myself on the side with multiple Harvard faculty, opposed to two E and J.

E and J were both incorrect for belittling my suggestion that their could be a link between Shinto and Japanese ecology. In response for your unwarranted barbs, I decided to work you.

What a waste of your lives you must be if some medical student* can be so correct about a topic he really does not care about, while you two devote your time, money, and youths to a topic which you cannot muster enough expertise to know more than rank amateurs on a little message board. I started with my post to honestly spur discussion, but with J's rudeness (followed by E's) I decided to go for blood. While I once joked about your tastes I can only assume that by your ignorance that you merely attended your classes out to satisfy a compulsion rather than actual learning.

Sincerely,

Doctor (to be)* Jim,

*I am medical student who is actually 18 months from getting my M.D. I still have patients etc. I would have mentioned it earliet but that long qualification was too unwieldy and was less punch than doctor did in the heat of debate.

he above link was too big to fit in the comment box so here is a smaller link to the Shinto and Ecology conference at Harvard.

For citations purposes,

if you google ["Rosemarie Bernard " shinto ecology], the 5th with the presentation that Rosemarie Bernard gave.

I wish I could post the link but Ironically, the site prevented me from posting the link considering it, above all else that I have posted on this string, to be possibly questionable content.

this is also why I had to post my previous posts 4 in a row.

How sad.

Dynamite comeback, worthy of your years of useless degrees.

Poor troll.

Joseph Sahn,

What did you mean by "nilhcan"

Posted by: Joseph Willemssen at July 21, 2005 03:42 AM

Please people. I liked this discussion better when it was about Japan and density. Lets not get personal.

Hey Jim,

I wasn't aware that my disagreeing with your assertion must automatically mean that I am "belittling" you. In fact, you had asked for a person with Japanese citizenship and of Japanese ethnicity to give an opinion--I have both, and I gave it. I didn't even initially go after your attempt to "honestly spur discussion," but reacted to your completely inappropriate rant against Joseph. There was absolutely no reason for you to call my degree "useless" and a "waste" especially since you have no idea what I do with my life or who I am. Furthermore, I see absolutely no evidence that you've proven yourself to be "so correct" about anything. I can only hope you'll be more successful communicating when you're a physician, or else your patients are in for a ride.

I'm finished here, folks.

Jim's argument is sound. Go Jim.

Actually, go Jo.

Yes, I have to say that I agree with Joseph on this, as well. He makes some very good pts.

Is there a website or other free resource that can help me conceptualize how different lifestyles (1st world urban, suburban, rural) impact upon the environment broken down into categories of transportation, food, housing, leisure etc? Ideally such a website would allow an individual to determine a general picture of their own waste through by comparing various typical composites (ie suburban soccer mom, urban single male, rural famiy)

As an individual, I think it would be helpful to understand what areas of my life most impact upon the environment. Without such metrics I feel that in terms of enviromental savings individuals can be akin to those who get the supersize McDonald's Big Mac meal with a diet coke, and consider themselves to be wisely dieting.

With regards to Lilly, I respectfully disagree with you. Joseph's main point has been that Japan is currently 75% forest since "it's a volcanic island with very steep mountains throughout most of the country. Can't really do much with that land except use it as forest" in a vaccum of Japanese culture or national. Although Joseph is entitled to his opinion, I consider it hard to beleive for two main reasons.

1) I consider it highly unlikely that a country as developed as Japan would be unable to get over the technological hurdle of building in mountainous areas. Much less technologically developed ivilizations have thrived all over the planet in mountainou region. Clearly they might not want to build on a sheer rock face, but forests as well do not grow on sheer rock face.

2) I assert that large patterns of a nation cannot be divorced from cultural context of the nation. Therefore I consider Joseph's assertion that the barriers to development are solely in terms of building efficiency to disregard other nuances of the situation. Such a nuance, could be the use of arable Japanese land for farms which are heavily subsidized by the goverment. From what I have read, the image of the domestic farmer looms large in the Japanese national pysche, as it does that American Farmers in the American national psyche, the French Farmer in the French etc. This presence causes causing the goverment to heavily subsidize farmers, thus perhaps preventing the use of that land for real estate. While I am not advocating such a use, I am merely illustrating how culture, values, and other soft factors can hugely influence national policy and actions (see my above Haiti/Dominican Republic example.

I was not proposing that shinto was the only aspect of Japanese culture that could perhaps be responsible for their land use, merely hoping to spring board a discussion on the topic generally. I personally took offense to Joseph trying to claim that merely economic/technical forces were at play, and then claim that the discussion is over. The contributions of "Andy W" and " C Lepisto" are examples of individuals providing more points of view on a subject rather than merely assuming that there can be only one way of looking at a problem.

Textbook trolling.

Dearest Joseph Willemssen Sahn,

What a stunning last minute reply to most recent post. I really must concede that you have proved you points that 1) the japanese are techologically unable to build anywhere with even the slightest incline or pebble 2) Major national trends such as development are completely divorced from national culture, beleifs, and history. 3) By himself, a single white man can provide every possibly relevant point of view and input on a topic as broad as choices of Japanese land use, development, and attitudes toward nature.

I have been nothing less that completely respectful to the overwhelming majority of posters on this page. True i have been harsh to you and another poster but at least seem to deserve it.

I find it funny that I lash out at you and you come back for more, just like the natural submissive that you are.

Jim,

P.S. What did you mean by "nilhcan"

Posted by: Joseph Willemssen at July 21, 2005 03:42 AM

That's pretty interesting, "doctor" - how exactly did the link to your email address (nothalo@gmail.com) disappear from all your posts all of a sudden?

Ok karate kids, can't we all get along?

Joseph Sahn,

I find it sad that you no longer address the topics that I bring up but merely snipe at me.

Regarding your paranoid question, let us follow Ockham's razor: which is the more simple explanation:
1) I have been so afraid of your dominating presence on this page, that after unabashedly used the email address that i use at the hospital and for personal correspondence, circa 13 times, i decided to get cold feet and only after i stopped making truly offensive comments did i hatch a plan to scrub my email address from every of my dozen previous emails. I feverously scrubbed by name from those dozen posts, since I did not want to reveal my true name. I should also note that in this scenario, my family surname is Halo and my christian name is Not, hence my name "Not Halo."

2) in my nearly 13th post on this page of putting my nom-de-plum "Jim" and my junk email did i merely neglect to put in the junk email again to save myself the tedium. which caused me to unknowningly remove my junk email address from the page, since the website only records your last entry of email address as the one it links to every instance of your name (as it seems we have all found out through this current round of cat and mouse.)

Hahaha - still trolling and spinning tall tales.