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136 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland
appears astonishing, is perhaps exceptional, but all the plantations I saw gave
evidence of extremely rapid growth, and showed a larger proportion of clean useful
poles and timber than any plantations which I have seen in other countries. 1
TIMBER
The wood is used for almost every purpose in Japan, but especially for tubs,
staves, and building. Though not as valuable as the best wood of Cupressits obtusa
for high-class buildings and internal work, it is, when properly selected, sawn, and
planed, highly ornamental both in colour and grain, easy to work, durable, and strong
enough for most purposes. It has also a most agreeable odour due to the presence
of a volatile oil called sugiol by Kimoto, 2 who gives an analysis of it, and states that
the wood on this account is used for making saktf casks, the sakt acquiring a peculiar
pleasant aroma.
It varies very much in colour and figure, the most valuable being the wide
planks sometimes 3 to 4 feet wide and over which are used for doors, ceilings, and
partitions in the best houses. The darkest in colour comes from the southern island
of Kiusiu, and is known as Satsuma sugi. When it shows a very fine red grain in old
gnarled butts it is known as Ozura-moko, the best of this colour being very valuable.
There is also a grey-coloured variety known as Gindai sugi, which appears to be
taken from trees which have died before felling, but I could not get very definite
information on this point.
The finest example I know of the ornamental use of Cryptomeria wood is the
ceiling of the large dining-room in Kanaya's Hotel at Nikko, which is composed of
panels about 30 inches square, cut from the butts of trees which show very curly and
intricate graining, and without polish have a natural lustrous gloss. The Japanese
never paint or varnish the wood in their houses inside or out, and attach more
importance than European builders do to its quality, colour, and figuring. It seems
very strange that none of the numerous travellers and writers on Japan have, so far
as I can learn, as yet paid any attention to the beauty of the Japanese timbers.
As a rule Cryptomeria is spoken of by English-speaking Japanese and Europeans
as cedar, but sugi is the native name.
The bark of the tree is also largely used, when taken off in large sheets, for
covering outbuildings of secondary importance, but does not appear to be so much
valued or so durable as the bark of Cupressiis obtusa, Thujopsis dolabrata, or
Sciadopitys verticillata. An ounce of the seed contains about 50,000 seeds. For
raising trees to plant in the colder parts of Europe I should certainly prefer seed
from the natural forests of the north to what is grown in the subtropical climate of
South and Central Japan, and I should therefore warn anyone wishing to plant this
tree largely to be very careful about the origin of the seed or plants.
The value of this wood varies considerably in Japan according to locality and
1 Tables of Production and Rate of Growth in Japan are given by Honda in Bull. Coll. Agric. Tokyo Imp. Univ. ii. 335
(1894-1899). 2 Bull. Coll. Agric. Tokyo Imp. Univ. iv. 403 (1900-1902).
Cryptomeria
quality, but about 80 yen per 100 cubic feet, equal to about is. 8d. per foot, is the
price in Tokyo, and selected half-inch boards for ceilings and panellings cost from 2s.
to 4.3. each.
Rein, in Industries of Japan, p. 226, speaks of a Cryptomeria which he measured
in 1874 having at \\ metres high a girth' of 9.41 metres, equal to about 30 feet.
This grew on the Sasa-no-yama-toge, between Tokyo and Kofu, at about 750 metres
above sea level.
Weston, in The Alps of Japan, mentions trees high up on the eastern side
of the pass between Nakatsugawa and the Ina-kaido, called the Misaka-toge,
on the northern slope of Ena-San, which measured at 3 feet from the ground no
less than 26 feet in girth. It would not be supposed possible that in a country
where neither machinery nor horse-power is used for the removal of timber such
large trees could be utilised, but the Japanese are very ingenious in the handling
of large logs in their mountain forests.
I was presented by Baron Kiyoura, Minister of Agriculture, with a most curious
and interesting series of sketches, which I found in the Imperial Bureau of Forestry,
showing the means adopted for felling and transporting large timber growing in
rocky gorges and the most inaccessible situations. These I exhibited at a meeting
of the Scottish Arboricultural Society at Edinburgh on loth February 1905.
The modus operandi is as follows: First men climb up the trees and lop off
all the large branches, so that the tree may not lodge among its standing neighbours
when felled. Ropes are then attached to the trunk and carried round a windlass, so
that it may be pulled over in the right direction.
When the tree is felled it is cut into suitable lengths, often 20 to 30 feet long,
and a hole cut in the end, to which a stout rope is attached. By this it is some
times dragged, sometimes lowered, to the nearest slide, which is built up of smaller
timber. Or, if the locality is too distant from a slide or from a stream large enough
to float it, a platform is built on the mountain-side, on which it is sawn into boards,
which are carried out of the forest on men's backs, or on sledges on the snow.
A most ingenious plan, which I have seen in no other country, is adopted where
the slope of the mountain is too steep to let a log slide at its own pace.
The slide is built in a zig-zag form, and at each angle a bank is made and
covered with earth and bark to check the impetus of the log, whose upper end
when so checked is reversed by means of a strong pole laid across the slide, and
then goes downwards till it reaches the next angle, where it is again checked and
reversed by its own weight.
To see a large gang of men, all singing in chorus at their work, moving timber
in a mountain forest under the direction of their foremen, is one of the most
interesting sights I beheld in Japan, and I could not sufficiently admire the pluck,
activity, and ingenuity they showed in the very dangerous and difficult work which
is necessary when logs get jammed, as they often do in these rapid mountain
torrents; and when men, standing on small rafts fastened to boulders in a roaring
rapid, or let down from above by ropes, have to dislodge the logs from where they
have stuck fast.