Changing Sawmill Industries in Akita-Sugi Area

Abstract

In recent years, the felling of Akita-Sugi (Natural Cedar, Cryptomeria japonica) has rapidly decreased in volume of resource diminution, and the sawmill industries located in its area has faced to a serious supply problem.In this paper, the author analysed the response of sawmill industries in Noshiro and Odate City in the Yoneshiro river basin famous as Akita-Sugi area.The results are summarized as follows:1) Akita-Sugi is the best qualified wood for sawmill industry in Japan. It is aged about two hundred years and distributed almost in national forests. The sawmill industry in Akita Prefecture has been priviledged the special sale system by the regional forestry office. Wartime and postwar deforestation of Akita-Sugi brought the rapid decrease of felling in recent years and it will be exhausted in near future.2) Under these conditions, the sawmill industries in Noshiro and Odate City have responded differently.a) The sawmill industries in Noshiro have added the processing in higher order such as Harimasa (a kind of hard board) and Meiboku (precious choice wood) production and pushed forward the dependence on imported timber. But such a conversion has brought the class differentiation between large-scale and small-scale factories.b) The sawmill industries in Odate have little developed recently and the multiproduction is less in percentage than in Noshiro. The supply of timber has moderately changed to the domestic afforested Sugi. Thus a sawn timber market was established in 1973 for the purpose to exploit new consumption for the afforested Sugi.3) There are two factors for the above different responses. The one is the difference in timber supply, that is, the sawmill industries in Noshiro are more urgent in this problem. The other is the different producing structure, that is, the multi-production is more advanced in Noshiro.