Placing tourism among the options for small forest owners in Northern Japan

Abstract

All too often, a small, private forest property fails to meet its potential for the owner or for the community. This is particularly true of depopulating rural areas in industrialized countries where community demographics are changing most. Some attention has recently been given to rural tourism as an option to assist Asian farmers in these circumstances, but what of its potential to assist small-scale forestry producers? This paper examines a population of small forest property owners in Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan. The paper assesses the receptiveness of this community of forest owners to the idea of tourism in their forests. Using original survey data, the paper illustrates that private forest owners’ openness to tourism is strongly related to their interpretation of ‘forest’ in metaphorical terms. The paper concludes by suggesting the best way to pursue the development of ‘forest tourism’ in this community is to rely on the forest owners cooperative to re-package the concept as a ‘secondary forest use’, more closely reflecting forest owners’ interpretations of the forest resource.