The article is pretty light on details. Essentially, the tree is first pruned to create a wide and sturdy base; once that's stable, subsequent shoots from the branches are pruned to grow vertically. The technique relies on this particular variety of cedar which tends to grow vertically but can also be made to spread out a bit. It has some advantages in space-saving and efficiency but it's also very labor-intensive.
This article is just a rehash or summary. Check out one of the sources it links to (since the other is broken) for details on the technique:
https://mymodernmet.com/kitayama-cedar-daisugi/
The strength & flexibility I would guess are attributable to the lack of knots and the straightness of the grain.
One thing both writers keep doing that's annoying is calling it a cedar. The tree is cryptomeria japonica, known as sugi, which in English is sometimes known by various misnomers such as "Japanese cedar" and "Japanese redwood," both of which should be taken as more poetic than scientific.
Few trees called "cedar" are in the Cedrus genus. To be fair many of these were called a type of "cedar" before the Cedrus genus was even coined. Cedar really just means "a really good tree" (for woodworking)
It’s exploiting the natural tendency of trees to create “waterspouts” through a technique called pollarding. When a tree suffers an injury it creates a bunch of new twigs that tend to grow straight upwards if the injury is on the upper branches. The waterspouts grow more slowly and so in this species of cedar they develop those desirable properties.
They grow straight because they are shoots/suckers, and that's how tree biology works. And they are pruned every two years to prevent knots and side branches.
The lumber is dense/strong because the shoots have a robustness advantage due to being part of a mature tree with all its resources.
Isn't this just Pollarding and/or Coppicing, which have been practiced for at least 2000 years in Europe (and probably many other cultures as well), with a healthy dose of orientalism added on top?
> Also known as 'Thing, Japan'. HN eats up articles like this every single week.
And invariably the top comment is a "Thing Also in Europe/US" smugly citing that the commenter knows about something that's vaguely similar which happens to be in their neck of woods rather than Japan; and therefore makes the article irrelevant (this part is never adequately explained).
The most recent one I remember was reacting to something about konbinis by saying "So what, Poland also has lots of convenience stores".
This is such an interesting subtext. I think the original comment was a bit unfair to call it "just pollarding," at the least it's a very specific subtype that has its own culture and clear uniqueness.
Your comment feels somewhat reductive as well, you could basically replace "Japan" with a lot of things that are appreciated by some sizable subset of HN readers.
But, for some reason Japan does seem to inspire a certain fervor in both the otakus and weeaboos and their inverses. I think it's because it's the closest thing to an alien civilization for Westerners.
“It is a little different, more like pollarding, and it doesn't work with any other conifers than saplings from one specific mutant cedar in a shrine near Kyoto.”
Please link a photo of a coppice/pollard in Europe that's as straight as this, along with the location where I can see it.
If you do, I have got a great new travel destination. If you don't then everyone else (and hopefully you too) will understand why people think this is special enough to link beyond the fact that it happens to be in Japan.
Are coppicing and pollarding used at all to produce timber? I had the impression that it was done only to make firewood, and was cut repeatedly without letting it grow like described in the article.
Ben Law in the UK used a sweet chestnut coppice as timbers for his house. Done properly coppicing can not only produce renewable and sustainable timber, but it is one of the only woodland management techniques that has significant positive impact on the ecology of the woodland in which it is practiced.
Some of the big "evil" forestry practices are now known to be helpful. Even clearcutting, if done in strips, is know to open up diverse habitats, replacing a uniform forest with a more varied one more amenable to animals.
I agree. In reality the only "evil" forestry practice in my mind practices are illegal logging. When everything is done by the book (my context is the UK) then there's a 10 year management plan (normally), felling license (always) and a re-stock agreement (always). It's a crop, but the public don't get that message and tend to view harvesting as an ecological tragedy. The clearcutting in strips is referred to as strip felling in the UK. Another one used increasingly more is continuous cover[0].
With a few narrow exceptions most timber crops in the the UK are monocultures or very limited mixes of pines/spruces/firs which outside of nesting season support very limited ecosystem. Even then the management plan for the site would have to account for species present and respond accordingly. Badgers? 20m no go zone from their sett and it may involve another license from Natural England.
I tend to operate at the border of woodland management and forestry. Coppicing typically tends to fall into the woodland management category due to the smaller scale nature of it, especially for when it is for "green woodworking" or craft use. The larger scale biomass coppice sites are very firmly in the forestry size, but still retain the ecological benefits to an extent.
“It is a little different, more like pollarding, and it doesn't work with any other conifers than saplings from one specific mutant cedar in a shrine near Kyoto.”
Not sure that's entirely fair - openculture.com is usually pretty good, and the article draws on multiple sources. But I take your word for it that the twitter thread is good and have added it to the top text.
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