ON THE SIGNIFICANT UTILIZATION OF THE FLATLAND FORESTS IN AGRICULTURE IN THE WESTERN SUBURBS OF TOKYO

Abstract

Taking it for granted that flatlands in Japan can mostly be developed to arable lands, we can find the unusual fact that the forests on flatlands are kept by rural people. We call them the flatland forests as compared with the mountain forests. Japanese farmers used to utilize those flatland forests mostly as the places which supplied materials useful to their rural lives. Since about 1960, however, flatland forests in the suburbs have rapidly begun to be used for the urban land-use under the rapid national economic growth of Japan. In this paper the author describes, first of all, the transformation and the decline of the utilization of the flatland forests on the Musashino Upland which happened to be the western suburbs of Tokyo, by examining three different periods of topographical maps and some documents. Secondly, he explains through his fieldworks the reason why the flatland forests are still kept and utilized in the farming especially in the area identified as the flatland forest area through the works above. The results are summarized as follows: 1. The flatland forests on the Musashino Upland had supplied lots of materials, such as fallen leaves from which the farmers made compost, and wood for fuel or charcoal among other things, before about 1960. But, as chemical fertilizers and fuel oil have come into wide use, the forests have generally become dispensable for their rural lives and have been converted into urban land-use (dwelling-sites, industrial-sites, school-estates etc.) along with the urban development of Tokyo Metropolitan Area. 2.. On the northern part of the Musashino Upland, especially in a rural community named Kamitome in Miyoshi-cho, lie a sizable amount of flatland forests still now. Until the 1960s, the farmers of Kamitome had gathered fallen leaves, wood for fuel, lumbers, roofing materials from their forests. They grew mainly barley and sweet potatoes on the farmlands covered with loam. They not only made fertilizer out of fallen leaves, but also they kept the seedbeds warmer by fermenting them. Thus, the fallen leaves were the most important materials from their forests. 3. In the 1960s the farmers of Kamitome stopped gathering wood for fuel and other subsistence goods from forest owing to the change of their way of life under the commercialized economy; while they continued to gather fallen leaves. Their agriculture became more prosperous by growing rootcrops (carrots and Japanese radishes) to add to sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes, which are shipped to the market in Tokyo as commercial products, are still grown by the traditional methods where they require a lot of fallen leaves, and it is necessary for the farmers to use a large quantity of compost from fallen leaves in the growth of rootcrops in order to prevent the troubles derived from planting the same crop repeatedly. Besides, fallen leaves are costless comparing with other organic fertilizers, and they are also available without fluctuation every year. Therefore, the flatland forests play an important role in many ways in the farming of Kamitome. 4. The author classified the farmers into two classes : the upper class farmers who possess more than 2 hectares of farmlands and the lower class farmers. The upper class farmers depend their livelihoods on the sweet potato cultivation with complementary rootcrop cultivation. Possessing most part of the forests in Kamitome, the upper farmers can get fallen leaves enough to reproduce their farming. Moreover, some of them possess surplus area of forests which can be used by lower farmers. The lower class farmers, on the other hand, mainly grow rootcrops. Most of them are newcomers or branch farmers. They possess no or little forests. They borrow part of the surplus forest of the upper farmers mentioned above to obtain fallen leaves necessary to keep their farming.